


Too Close For Comfort

by Miko



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-30
Updated: 2008-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This mission has brought Kanda and Lavi closer than they ever wanted to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"C'mon, Yuu, what's your problem?" Lavi stretched his arms up over his head, inhaling deeply. "It's gorgeous out here. Pretty flowers coming up, birds singing in the distance, spring sun shining down through the branches. What more could you ask for?"

The redhead was right that the forest was beautiful. If not for the loudmouth accompanying him, Kanda might have been quite enjoying himself. But it was hard to appreciate the quiet zen of a forest when you were travelling with someone who didn't know how to shut up. "I just think this is a massive waste of time," he replied sourly. "We're only distracting ourselves from getting back to the Order with the Innocence we retrieved. The chances of this woman actually being able to tell true fortunes are unbelievably low."

"Not if she's using Innocence," Lavi pointed out. "According to the Finder Bookman spoke to, this woman has been giving accurate predictions and selling spells that actually seem to _work_ for years. Plus there have been Akuma sighted in every area she's travelled through recently. It all adds up. Admit it, you're just worried she'll cast a love spell on you or predict some kinda horrible fortune that'll actually come true."

Glaring at Lavi never had much effect, but it did make Kanda feel marginally better. "These people are Gypsies, Lavi. From everything I've ever heard about them, they're lying, swindling thieves. This woman is probably about as much of a real witch as I am."

Lavi made a 'tsk' sound and wagged his finger at Kanda. "Honestly, Yuu, judging a book by its cover like that. The Bookmen have had more than a few encounters with the Romany over the years, and they're not always what they seem to be. If there _is_ such a thing as a real fortune-teller, I'd believe it would be one of them."

That made Kanda pause, because he had to admit that the history of the Bookmen went back further and was a great deal more accurate than the folktales and gossip that were all _he_ had to go by. The prospect that this woman might be for real actually made it worse. The last thing he wanted to do was get mixed up with that sort of power. "In which case it still has nothing to do with Innocence," he said. " _You_ probably just want to get her to give you a love spell or something ridiculous like that."

"Yeah, and Bookman would so agree to taking a day out of our trip for that. What are you so freaked about anyway, Yuu? Don't tell me you're afraid of a little old fortune-teller?" Lavi was _grinning_ at him like an idiot, apparently delighted to have found a perceived weak spot. Kanda ground his teeth and refused to answer, swatting an overhanging branch out of his way and hoping it would strike the moron trailing after him.

No such luck, unfortunately. Laughing, Lavi ducked the branch and came up beside him, walking on the other side of the deeply rutted track they were following into the forest. "C'mon, she's probably some harmless old broad whose bark is worse than her bite. What's the big deal?"

"Big words from someone who's afraid of vampires," Kanda snapped, losing his patience. "I just want to get back to headquarters and get this mission over with, not go chasing after wild geese." And if he had to threaten Komui to get the man to assign him a new partner for his next mission, he wouldn't hesitate to do it. Kanda was rapidly reaching his limit for how much of Lavi he could stand at a stretch.

"Hey, that was a totally different situation," Lavi protested. "Vampires are not known for being friendly to visitors, unlike the Romany. The worst a Rom'll do to you is cheat you out of some money, but a vam... hold it." He flung his arm out abruptly, barring Kanda's path, and stopped in the middle of the road. Baffled, Kanda watched as Lavi stared blankly into the distance.

"Hear that?" the redhead asked, all laughter suddenly gone from his voice. Kanda strained his ears, and finally made out the distinctive whine of an Akuma's bullets.

"Fuck," he swore, and put a hand on Mugen's hilt. "It's got to be at least a mile ahead. We'll never get there in time."

"Oh, ye of little faith," Lavi said, a fierce smile lighting his face that was nothing like his usual carefree grin. He drew his hammer, expanding it so quickly Kanda didn't even see the shift. Planting the head firmly on the rutted trail, he gripped the shaft and beckoned to Kanda. "Hang on tight, Yuu, it's gonna be a bumpy ride."

Kanda grabbed the shaft of the hammer and moved closer beside Lavi. "Oodzuchi Kodzuchi, extend!" the redhead shouted almost cheerfully, and the hammer shaft shot up and out along the trail.

Kanda had never actually travelled via Lavi's hammer before, though he'd heard Allen's story and seen Lavi do it several times. It took him a second to reposition himself, scrambling to sit on the shaft behind Lavi. He was forced to grip the other man's jacket with his free hand to keep from being blown off by the wind created by their passage. He couldn't believe how fast they were moving.

They zipped along through the trees, and the sound of the bullets grew rapidly nearer. It was soon joined by the sound of screaming and shouting, and he felt Lavi tense in front of him. "Here we go," the redhead warned, and a moment later they burst into a clearing where a dozen horse-drawn wagons had been gathered together.

Lavi had slowed their pace just enough that Kanda was willing to risk jumping free. As he pushed off the shaft he was already drawing Mugen, launching himself towards the nearest Akuma. He caught the monster completely by surprise, slicing through it and the one behind it before any of them realized they were under attack. On the other side of the camp he heard more explosions accompanied by Lavi's bright laughter.

More bullets rained down around him, and Kanda ducked and dodged through the hail. One powerful jump took him up to the roof of one of the wagons, and a second got him up into the air above the clearing where most of the Akuma were hovering. "Innocence, activate!" he shouted, drawing two fingers down the length of Mugen's blade and leaving shining silver fire in his wake.

He made short work of three more of the monsters, using each one to leap off and strike at the next. Lavi's hammer shot past him as he jumped between the second and third, narrowly missing him and smashing into a fourth that had been trying to sneak up behind him. Kanda didn't bother to offer thanks, too busy carving the Akuma before him to pieces.

Unfortunately the third Akuma was too far from any of the others for him to cross the distance in the air, so he was forced to land again. He hit the ground running, already focused on his next target. There was a second level Akuma hovering above everything, its oblong form easy to spot among the grotesque spheres of the first levels. It looked like some kind of animated playing card, but with a design unlike anything Kanda had ever seen before.

"Kaichuu: Ichigen," Kanda called, and the blade of his sword burst into a dozen pieces. The Hell's Insects swarmed up towards the second level, passing right through two other Akuma that exploded in their wake.

Unfortunately that slowed them marginally and gave the second level warning that they were coming. "Exorcists," it snarled, and flew higher in an attempt to outrun the Insects.

"Oh, no you don't!" Kanda and Lavi spoke on the same breath, and the flaming snake of Lavi's Fire Seal soared into the air from the other side of the camp. The Insects and snake twined around each other, almost seeming to urge each other on as they raced for the Akuma.

"Wheel of Fate!" The second level spun in place, and when it stopped the picture on its flat side had changed to a circle of the zodiac that slowly rotated in place. "Up becomes down, and all things must fall after rising."

"You've got to be kidding me," Lavi exclaimed. The fire snake and Insects, working harmoniously just moments before, suddenly seemed to turn on each other. Startled, Kanda tried to direct the Insects away, but they struck the Akuma in an extremely weakened state. Lavi's fire roared past the Akuma in a showy flash that did very little actual damage, far less than it should have.

"What the hell?" Kanda dodged the bullets from another of the first levels. When he turned the Insects on it, they barely made an impact. "What did it _do_?"

"It turned the Wheel," Lavi called back, an answer that did absolutely nothing to enlighten Kanda. "Just use Mugen, it should work fine."

He was following his own advice, having released the flame snake and gone back to attacking the Akuma directly with his hammer. It was doing damage as it was supposed to, slamming right through a pair of first levels.

Snarling, Kanda called the Hell's Insects back to him, and let them reform into Mugen's blade. The first levels had converged on him again, though there were noticeably fewer than there had been in the beginning of the battle. Pushing off the ground, he slashed at the nearest one, intending to repeat his earlier aerobatics and clear himself enough space to go after the second level again.

When he heard the second level laugh, he had a sinking feeling he was about to be in trouble. "Judgement!" it crowed, and light flashed from it to every first level in the air. "Let the sword of justice balance the scales."

Hearing the way Lavi started swearing creatively didn't make Kanda feel any better about the situation. Somehow he wasn't surprised when Mugen was deflected by the surface of the next Akuma, as if it had suddenly grown a coat of armour even his Innocence couldn't penetrate. It had also developed new weapons, as he discovered when a massive metal blade swung at him out of nowhere. He barely managed to dodge; he felt the sharp blade catch on the hem of his jacket, and when he looked there was a slice halfway up his thigh.

 _All_ of the first levels had sprouted swords, and they were converging on him and Lavi with obvious murderous intent. Kanda blocked one and parried another, and this time he succeeded in landing a hit. Mugen cut into the Akuma, but a blow that would have utterly destroyed it a minute ago now only carved a chunk out of its side. It was damaged, but still capable of fighting.

"Now what?" he demanded when he ended up back to back with Lavi, both of them struggling just to keep the Akuma from chopping them to pieces. Kanda was absolutely humiliated to find himself unable to handle half a dozen first levels.

"Now we try something different, and hope the Wheel only affected my Fire Seal," Lavi replied. The familiar ring of seals formed around him. "Raitei Kaiten!" He slammed his hammer into the seal for 'heaven', and an unbelievable amount of lightning crashed down around them.

Too late, Kanda tried to shield his eyes. The noise was deafening, and his eyes were watering from all the light. At that, he still fared better than the Akuma. When he was finally able to make out anything through the phantom lights dancing in his vision, he saw that the sky around them was clear.

"Try this on for size, big guy," Lavi shouted, and aimed another massive burst of lightning at the second level.

"Chariot! The journey is the destination." The Akuma spun in place again and vanished just before the attack would have reached it, and the lightning spent itself harmlessly in the sky.

"Shit. Where'd it go?" Lavi said, twisting to try to see more of the area. Kanda did the same, scanning the sky and the trees around them, his whole body tense as he waited for the Akuma to pop out at them again.

When nothing had happened for a full two minutes, Kanda cautiously relaxed and lowered Mugen. "Apparently it didn't like the idea of facing us directly. Why didn't it just use the same ability as the first time?"

"Because if it'd spun the Wheel again, the Insects and the Fire Seal would've been back up on top," Lavi said as if that should have explained everything. "I can't believe there's an Akuma that uses tarot attacks, for crying out loud."

"It was one of the Rom, not so long ago," a low, sultry voice replied. Kanda looked around and saw that people were cautiously climbing out from beneath the wagons, where they'd apparently taken shelter from the bullets of the Akuma.

The speaker was a woman, and she matched the implied promise of her voice. She was older than them, perhaps in her thirties, with the lithely muscled body of a dancer. Kanda was certain of it, because the colourful skirts and scarves she wore revealed a shocking amount of her body. She was beautiful, but in a darkly exotic way that made Kanda feel apprehension rather than attraction.

The same could not be said of his comrade, of course. "Strike!" Lavi exclaimed, and Kanda could practically see the hearts in the redhead's eye. " _Wow_ , you are so my type! I don't s'ppose you'd consider..."

"No." The rejection was delivered calmly, but there was a sense of power behind the word that made even Lavi falter in his puppy-love. Kanda felt as if he was being watched and weighed by some kind of higher being, and it put him instantly on edge.

Scowling, he deactivated Mugen and sheathed the blade, just to give himself something else to think about for a moment. "Let me guess. You're the woman we're looking for," he said, not a doubt in his mind. He was no kind of sensitive, and even he could sense the power this woman wielded.

"If you are looking for the 'Gypsy witch', then aye, you've found her," the woman acknowledged, her expression cool. "But I wonder if I should thank you for saving us, or question the extreme convenience of your arrival on the heels of the monsters."

Kanda stiffened, offended by the implication thinly veiled by her words. "How dare you suggest we would have anything to do with Akuma," he spat, hand clenching on Mugen's hilt again.

Lavi's hand snapped out and closed over the top of the saya before he could draw the blade, forcing him to either keep Mugen in the sheath or risk cutting right through the other man's fingers. "Easy, Yuu," he murmured. "I got it covered."

He flashed a friendly smile at the woman - only friendly this time, not worshipful or lustful - and said something in a language completely foreign to Kanda. Judging by the startled and shocked reactions of the people around them, it was probably the Gypsy tongue.

The woman said something in reply, and Lavi shook his head ruefully. " 'Fraid I pretty much exhausted my fluency with that first bit, lady. I still got a lot of studying to do; I don't know nearly as many languages as my master the Bookman yet."

"Indeed. Your accent is horrid," she agreed, but her expression was much more open and her tone was welcoming. "I know of the Bookmen, though I never expected to meet one." She laughed at Lavi's surprised look. "Did you think you were the only keepers of secrets? The wisemen and women of the Romany know many things hidden to the rest of the world. Well met then, my friends. We owe you our lives. Why have you come in search of me? Did you wish to have your fortunes told?" She raised an eyebrow, looking dubious.

Releasing his grip on the hilt, Kanda forced himself to relax again. "We heard rumours about your power, and thought it might be related to Innocence," he said. "The attack by the Akuma confirms it. You must be an Accommodator."

"My power comes to me from my bloodline, as my mother's did before me," she told them. "For now, my people are hurt and I must tend to them before we talk of this further." She turned on her heel and disappeared behind one of the wagons before either of them could say anything to stop her.

"Well." Lavi grinned at Kanda, and the hearts were back in his eyes - albeit somewhat dimmed. "She's certainly gonna make an interesting addition to the Order. Hope she gets assigned to our branch."

"You're an idiot," Kanda retorted. That was all that needed to be said, really. It covered pretty much everything where Lavi was concerned.

"And you love me for it," Lavi agreed cheerfully, slapping him on the shoulder. "C'mon, let's make sure the Akuma didn't leave any unpleasant surprises behind."

They split up, prowling around the devastated campsite in opposite directions. Kanda caught a glimpse of the fortune-teller bent over a man who'd been impaled by a broken bit of wood from one of the destroyed wagons. The injured were all a result of indirect damage like that; anyone actually struck by an Akuma bullet was dust already. Far more numerous than the injured were the people weeping over lost loved ones. Kanda kept a wary eye out. Where there was one Akuma there could always be more, and without Allen there was no way to tell them apart from ordinary people.

He reached the opposite side of the clearing well ahead of Lavi, and it wasn't hard to figure out why. All Kanda had to do was look around to spot the redhead flirting with another pretty Gypsy girl. Even as he watched a burly man came up and put his hand on the girl's shoulder possessively, glaring at Lavi. The Exorcist backed off with a nervous laugh and his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. Growling, Kanda turned away, afraid he would snap and say something he'd regret if he kept watching the idiot's antics.

Well, maybe 'regret' was too strong a word.

"How was I s'pposed to know she was married?" Lavi complained as he came up beside Kanda. The redhead leaned against a tree and crossed his arms behind his head. "She looked a bit too young."

"I suppose I should be grateful you have enough self-preservation instinct to back off at all," Kanda said, glaring at him. "Can't you keep it in your pants for five minutes?"

"Hey, I was just tryin' to offer comfort and consolation," Lavi said, an exaggerated hurt look on his face. "Can I help it if the guy took it the wrong way?"

"One of these days you're going to offend the wrong husband or father or brother, and I'm not going to bail you out when it happens," Kanda declared. At least Lavi's incredibly heavy-handed flirting style meant he never _got_ anywhere with women, or they'd probably never get him to focus on the damn job. Kanda had to wonder how a man who otherwise seemed quite socially adept could possibly believe women would appreciate his approach. And he never _learned_ from his failures, either.

Slowly the caravan was put back to rights again, at least as much as it could be. The injured were laid out by the relit campfire in the centre, the wagons circled around it and the surviving horses gathered from the surrounding forest where they'd fled. Darkness was falling rapidly, and Kanda sighed as he realized they were going to have to spend the night with the Gypsies. At least it would give them more time to convince the fortune-teller to go with them back to the Order.

Someone had set up a stewpot over the fire, and the smell of it was making Kanda hungry. He hadn't eaten since they'd left the town that morning. To his surprise, an old crone made her way over to them, carrying two bowls filled with the rich stew. She said something incomprehensible in their language as she offered the bowls to them, grinning up at Lavi.

"I think they noticed your tendency to flirt with anything in a skirt," Kanda remarked, amused. He took the bowl politely with both hands and nodded his thanks, since she didn't seem to speak any language he knew. "Maybe they're testing to see how far it goes. Or maybe she's just that desperate."

"Ha ha, very funny," Lavi replied, rolling his eyes. "I wouldn't assume she can't understand you, if I were you. Thank you," he added to the woman, accepting his bowl and scooping a big spoonful into his mouth. The look that crossed his face a moment later was comically dismayed. "Ow, shit, that's hot," he exclaimed around the mouthful, fanning himself like that would somehow help.

"Idiot," Kanda repeated yet again. Maybe one of these days it would sink in, though he wasn't holding his breath.

"What? I'm hungry," Lavi said, blowing on the next spoonful to cool it first.

The old lady cackled and moved away, leaving them to their dinner. Actually, everyone was steering clear of them, Kanda realized. There was a wide circle around them where nobody was venturing, even to cross from one place to another. Apparently they'd earned their supper, but not company.

"Sure recover fast, don't they?" Lavi observed as someone began beating a drum. Several couples formed to dance around the fire, and shortly a fiddle and pipes had joined the drum.

"What are they celebrating?" Kanda asked, incredulous. They'd just lost a significant portion of their families, yet they were acting as if it was some kind of festival.

"Life, s'far as I can tell," Lavi replied. "Not a bad way to handle it, really. Give thanks for those who survived, rather than brooding over everything they lost. Maybe if more people thought that way, the Earl wouldn't have such an easy time creating new Akuma." He shrugged. "Think I'll go give back the bowl and see if they'll let me join in."

"What? We're not here to have a party, Lavi, we've got a job to do," Kanda said.

"Yeah, and we can't do it 'til the hot lady comes back to talk to us, so there's no sense standin' around like lumps in the meantime," Lavi insisted, his grin widening. "C'mon, Yuu, lighten up. Maybe if you let yourself have a little fun once in a while you wouldn't have such a big stick up your ass."

"One of us has to pay attention to the mission," Kanda retorted. "You certainly don't seem inclined to." Lavi just waved at him and headed off towards the campfire, obviously not caring in the least what Kanda's estimation of his professionalism was.

Seething, Kanda found a spot that was out of the way where he could see the whole camp, and kept an eye on their surroundings. That second level was still out there, and probably wouldn't give up this easily. He, at least, refused to be caught by surprise.

He wasn't sure how much time passed, but it had been fully dark for quite a while when a soft voice spoke at his shoulder. "I am ready." Startled, Kanda whirled, one hand on Mugen. How the hell had someone snuck up on him like that?

For a moment he didn't see anyone. Then the fortune-teller seemed to melt out of the shadows, appearing out of nowhere. The hairs on the back of Kanda's neck rose, and he shivered. He was truly starting to dislike this woman. Lavi's wishes to the contrary, he really hoped she _wasn't_ assigned to their branch.

"Your friend certainly seems to be enjoying himself," she observed, looking towards the campfire with a small smile. Lavi had managed to make friends with the Gypsies after all, and one of the girls was teaching him the steps to their dance. He was laughing, clearly having a ball.

"Lavi's good at that," Kanda said, unable to keep the sourness out of his voice. "It's about the only thing he really seems to dedicate himself to."

"Indeed?" She raised an eyebrow at him, and he felt suddenly like a bug pinned to a board for study. Kanda had a definite sense that he'd just been found wanting in some way. He fought the urge to squirm, scowling. "And you, the ever-vigilant one, disapprove?"

"You make it sound like I'm the one in the wrong," he snapped, shifting his weight uneasily. "Do you want your people attacked again while we're not paying attention?"

"Of course not," she answered. "Come, both of you. We will talk in my _vardo_."

Turning to call Lavi over, Kanda was startled into jumping for a second time that night. The redhead was already right there behind him, somewhat winded from the dancing but with his grin firmly in place and the hearts back in his eye. When had he come over, and why hadn't Kanda noticed?

"Geez, Yuu, you're way too wired," Lavi informed him. "Toldja you need to relax. Should've come and danced, it was fun. Lead the way, lady."

"My name is Marda," she said as she turned and led them towards one of the wagons. "And you are Lavi and Yuu?"

"Kanda," Kanda corrected her hastily, glaring at Lavi. "My name is Kanda. Someday I'll cram it into the idiot's head."

"I'm the same age as you, I'm allowed to call you by given name," Lavi said, the same stupid argument he always used when Kanda made another futile attempt to get the man to stop calling him Yuu.

"Kanda, then," Marda conceded. "Come." She opened the door to her wagon and preceded them inside. Lavi followed right behind her, and Kanda was left standing outside. For some reason he felt horribly uneasy about going into that wagon. Maybe it was just that he didn't want to be inside in case the Akuma took the opportunity to attack again. Or maybe his intuition was smarter than he was, insisting he didn't want to be trapped in a small space with that woman. Especially not one of her choosing.

"Y'coming, Yuu?" Lavi called back, and that finally got him moving. There was no way in hell Kanda was going to give the idiot any excuse to say _he_ was slacking in his duties this time. The redhead would undoubtedly milk it for everything it was worth, and then some.

Stepping up into the wagon, he was surprised to find it was more spacious than he'd expected. Part of it was curtained off, presumably a private area, but the front was an open space with brightly coloured cushions everywhere and a low round table in the centre. Lavi was already seated cross-legged to one side, and Marda sat across the table from the entrance. Kanda knelt on a third cushion, Mugen set to one side of him as he settled into proper _seiza_. He felt rather at home sitting like this, and some of his unreasonable distress eased.

Marda smiled at him, and he shivered again at the sense that she could see right through him and read his thoughts. "Be welcome in my home," she said formally. "Now, we may speak freely. The creature that attacked us, you wondered why it used such a power. It was once one of my people, a very powerful wisewoman who led a clan distantly related to mine." Her expression was one of regret. "I had heard she went mad with grief when her lover was killed by _Gaujo_ who accused him of being a thief. I could sense both their souls in that monster."

Lavi nodded, for once being serious. "That's what Akuma are," he said. "Monsters created out of grief and desperation. Only Innocence can destroy them."

"And you think I have such a thing." She shook her head, her dark eyes glittering in the candlelight. "I am sorry you have travelled so far for nothing, but I am not what you seek. My power is not like yours in any way."

"But the Akuma are drawn..." Kanda started, but she lifted a hand to stop him.

"That monster has been cutting a swath through the Romany clans for weeks," she said. "She started with her own, then went after the nearest clan. I've been able to hide our trail until today, but her magic is now more powerful than mine. I fear for my people, all of them. She will not stop until all the Rom are dead."

"We'll destroy it as soon as it shows itself again," Kanda assured her, his eyes narrowed. "That's our job as Exorcists."

"I think she will likely withdraw for the time being, to regather her forces," Marda said. "I intend to be gone from this place before then, and I will use my strongest magic to hide us for as long as I can. I wish you luck in finding it, but I think it will not be soon."

"Maybe sooner than you think," Lavi warned her. "The Earl has a lot of Akuma available. If all it's after is reinforcements, it won't take long."

"I am sorry that I can not be of more help to you in this matter," Marda told them, and she seemed genuinely apologetic. So why was all the hair on the back of Kanda's neck standing up again? "My people and I still owe you a life debt, however, and I would not leave such unpaid if I have the choice."

The power around her suddenly surged, growing until the air was suffocating with it. Kanda would be ashamed to admit it later, but he frankly panicked. He snatched at Mugen, his only thought that he had to protect himself somehow. "Shit, shit, shit!" he heard Lavi swear beside him, and the redhead was scrambling for his Innocence as well.

Invisible hands gripped Kanda's body and held him still. No, it was more like he'd lost control of his body entirely, and no matter how much he struggled he couldn't so much as twitch. He could still see and hear, though, and the sound of rapid, ragged breathing to his right told him Lavi wasn't faring any better.

She stood over them, and Kanda would almost swear he could _see_ the power gathered around her like a cloak of shadows. "Both of you are young, and have much to learn," she said, her voice low and thrumming with something far bigger than any human should be able to control. "Like swords not properly tempered, you each have flaws that could shatter you if not mended. Yet those same flaws could become your strengths, if you let them. The world has not given you the time you require to mature to your full potential; you are needed _now_. So I will play the blacksmith and temper them for you."

She looked at Lavi. "Objectivity is a virtue, but you are not meant for true neutrality. Stop fighting against your heart and learn to embrace it. Destiny has another role in mind for you, and you are badly needed in it. You will accomplish nothing while torn in two." She turned to Kanda. "The path you have chosen is a difficult one, and you rightly give everything you have to it. But you are mistaken in believing that shutting out others hastens you along your way. Learn to rely on the strengths of others, or you will not reach your goal before the last petal falls."

If he could have, Kanda would have gone rigid with shock. How could she _possibly_ know...? But her words were ridiculous. Other people only weighed him down, distracted him from his goal. That had always been true, and always would be. Just look at how useless Lavi had been on this mission.

Staring helplessly into her eyes, for a moment Kanda thought he could see all of the night sky in her dark irises. Stars and planets whirled in dizzying patterns, the whole universe spread out for him to see. It was so vast that he couldn't encompass it, yet it was oddly almost comforting.

Then the pain swallowed him. Kanda screamed, or tried to. He couldn't hear his own voice; couldn't hear anything, see anything, feel anything but pain. He was being crushed, as if a giant was trying to squash him into a box half his size. The pressure was unbearable, and it was going to flatten him completely.

"Open yourselves to what other people can give you. Or you will be lost, and the war lost with you." Her voice reached him past the pain, searing a line of agony through him like a spear driven through his body.

It was too much, and darkness overwhelmed him as his mind shut down in a futile effort to protect him. Kanda's last thought was one of bitter vindication. He'd _known_ it was a bad idea to go hunting for a witch.


	2. Chapter 2

The world still felt like it was spinning when Lavi sluggishly returned to consciousness. Normally he woke quickly and all at once, so the slow process of returning to awareness was even more disorienting. His head was pounding with the most unbelievable headache he'd ever experienced, and he couldn't stop the faint moan that escaped him.

Then he tensed, because the moan hadn't sounded... right. Lavi opened his eyes, and was assaulted by a view unlike anything he'd ever seen before. The world had gone dim and fuzzy, missing the high level of clarity and detail he was used to. Colours weren't quite what he expected them to be, as if something had shifted the entire spectrum over a notch. Worse, he was seeing everything in three dimensions, which meant his eye-patch had gotten lost at some point.

Hastily he clapped a hand over his right eye, and tried to force the rest of what he could see to make sense. It felt like a nightmare, except his nightmares always had pretty much the same visual quality as what he saw the rest of the time. Certainly nothing like this. "What the fuck did she _do_?" he rasped plaintively. "Yuu?"

 _"Nng. Ow."_ The Japanese Exorcist's grunt of pain was highly reassuring. At least he wasn't alone. _"Lavi?"_

"I think she drugged me or something," Lavi muttered, slowly easing himself into a sitting position. "I can't see straight, and it feels like my body's not responding properly. Everything's off kilter. You?"

 _"My brain feels like it's about to explode,"_ Kanda grumbled. _"When I get my hands on that witch I'll kill her myself, Innocence or no Innocence."_

"I'd agree with you, except I don't think I want a second dose of whatever power she's packing," Lavi said. "Ugh, the whole world's gone wonky. What's that?" There was something... no, some _one_... lying next to him, turned on their side away from him. Reaching out with one shaking hand, Lavi hauled the person over onto their back. The body moved like a lifeless doll, no resistance at all, though the skin was thankfully too warm for it to be a corpse.

He moved closer to try to get a better look, cautiously lowering his hand from his right eye. It didn't seem to be causing him any trouble for the moment, and with everything so foggy he needed all the help he could get. Leaning over the body, he focused on the details he _could_ see. Dark jacket, tangled scarf that was some colour similar to red, messy brownish hair over the face, and... and...

"No fucking way." Trembling, Lavi stared at the unconscious man, his eyes wide. " _No_ fucking way." The dark blotch of the eye-patch that covered most of the man's right face was unmistakeable, as were the clothes, even if the details didn't quite match what _he_ saw in the mirror every day. Was this how other people saw him? Was this how other people saw _everything_?

An even more horrible thought struck him. "Yuu?" he said, his voice shaking more than his body. "What do you see?"

 _"What? Why..."_

"Just indulge me," Lavi insisted. "What do you see, right now?"

 _"I see you,"_ Kanda replied, impatient. _"You're lying... with your eye closed... wait. You're unconscious? Then how...?"_

"Try to move your fingers," Lavi said, looking down at his hand. He hadn't noticed before, or rather had chalked it up to the way _everything_ looked weird, but it looked nothing like his hand. The skin was too pale, and the fingers were slender and long rather than strong and blunt. There were thick calluses on the palm and fingers, too. Calluses like someone who spent half of every day practicing with a sword might develop.

Kanda grumbled, but didn't argue further. _"What... I can't move,"_ he exclaimed after a strained moment. _"I can't make my hand move. What the hell is going on?"_

"Uh-huh. That's what I was afraid you were gonna say." Lifting his hand, Lavi flexed his fingers. "Is it moving now?"

 _"How..."_ There was a terrible moment of silence, during which Lavi swore he could _feel_ Kanda's growing apprehension and horror as realization dawned. _"That's not possible."_

"Six impossible things before breakfast?" Lavi suggested weakly, though he didn't expect Kanda to get the reference. "Never mind. Looks like I'm in control of your body. I dunno how she did it, but it doesn't really matter."

 _"And where am I, exactly?"_ Kanda demanded. His words sounded angry, but Lavi sensed a thread of fear underlying it. Lavi couldn't blame the other man in the least. He was scared half out of his mind, too. Hell, he wasn't even _in_ his own mind to start with.

"In here with me, but not in control, I guess," he replied uncertainly. Looking at his unconscious body was giving him a serious case of the creeps, so he glanced around the rest of the clearing instead. At least, he assumed they were still in the same clearing; it was hard to be certain, because nothing looked the same to him. There were furrows in the ground that might have been wagon tracks, and a glowing heap nearby that was probably what remained of the central fire. "Is this how you always see things?"

 _"I don't know. What are you seeing? Everything looks normal to me."_ Kanda's voice took on a disgusted note. _"Looks like the Gypsies are gone, the cowards. Ran off in the night and just left us here. What if the Akuma had come back?"_

Lavi shivered. "It didn't, so let's not dwell on it," he said. "We need to get out of here and back to Bookman as soon as possible. Maybe he can fix this. It's gotta be playing merry hell with our qi. If he can straighten out the flow, maybe he can get us back where we belong."

Cautiously he stood, fighting his new body with every movement. "It's like I'm wearing clothes that are put on backwards and two sizes too small," he complained. "And I feel like I'm trying to see through a thick fog. How do you live like this?"

This time Lavi got a distinct sense of outrage. _"I don't know what you're talking about. My vision is perfect. Better than yours, in fact, since I've got both eyes."_

"Yeah, the depth perception isn't making it any easier for me to adjust," Lavi grumbled. "You've got twenty-twenty vision. That's not perfect, that's normal. There's a difference." He rubbed a hand over his eyes. They were already aching with the strain of trying to deal with his unconscious demands on them, and he realized he was squinting in an attempt to see things more clearly. "Well, hopefully I won't need to get used to it. Let's get moving."

Kneeling beside his body, he checked the vital signs. Pulse and respiration were both slow but steady, he saw with relief. He was in no danger of dying any time soon, and not being in possession of his body didn't seem to be doing it any harm so far. Carefully he worked his arms under the body's back and knees, and tried to lift.

The effort made him grunt, and he could feel the strain on his back and shoulders immediately. "Holy fuck, I'm heavy," he exclaimed, setting it back down again quickly. "Deadweight, too. How am I going to get this all the way back to town? I'm not leaving it _here_."

 _"That's what you get for pigging out like you do every time."_ Kanda sounded smug.

"Say what? You've seen Kro-chan and Allen eat, and you're calling _me_ a pig?" Lavi asked in disbelief.

 _"That's different. They're parasite types, they actually need all that food. What's your excuse?"_

"I'm a healthy, growing eighteen-year-old male, that's my excuse," Lavi retorted. "You don't exactly eat like a bird either, and if anything you're underweight. Now shut up and lemme figure this out."

He thought furiously, his mind going over angles and fulcrum points and balances. Finally he shrugged and sighed. "Only one thing for it, I guess." Grabbing his body by the shoulders, he dragged it over to the nearest tree and propped it into a sitting position. Taking off his scarf, he moved around to kneel in front of his body, with his back to it.

 _"What are you doing?"_

"Getting it into a position that's not gonna kill me to carry it all the way back," Lavi said, shifting until he had his body's arms slung over his shoulders. He used the scarf to tie the wrists together, then hooked his arms under its legs. "Standing is gonna be the hard part. Is it weird that I'm thinking of my own body as an inanimate 'it'? 'S too damn confusing to think of it as 'me'."

Carefully he leaned forward, hitching the weight of his body up on his back. He managed to get his feet under him and slowly stood, staying bent at the waist to keep the weight distributed evenly over his back. Once he was on his feet he straightened and let the weight rest on his arms instead. It was awkward as hell, especially since he was a bit taller than Kanda and his arms and legs were significantly longer. "We probably look like a couple of idiots, but it'll do," he declared, satisfied.

 _"That's only a change from the normal state for me,"_ Kanda said. _"Who's going to see us out here in the forest anyway? Just hurry. The sooner we get back to Bookman, the sooner we can get back to normal."_

Grunting his assent, Lavi decided to save his breath for walking. He was going to need it. Kanda was in terrific physical shape, frankly much better than Lavi was, but Lavi didn't know how to use the body efficiently. The extra energy he expended just trying to move more than made up for the difference.

At least the more he moved, the easier it became to do so. It was a gradual shift, but it unnerved him how quickly he was settling into someone else's body. He hoped the reverse adjustment would be just as fast.

After a good fifteen minutes of brooding over it, he decided that taking his mind off the situation was more important than conserving his air. "Man, if I had to be stuck in someone else's body, why couldn't it be someone interesting?"

 _"What's that supposed to mean?"_

"Well, you and I aren't all that different, really." Lavi hitched his body a little higher. "Can't say I'd wanna be stuck in Allen's body though, not with that curse of his." He shuddered, and nearly lost his grip. He had to scramble to get it back, and adjusted his hold once he had his balance back so it wouldn't happen again.

 _"I don't know. Being able to spot Akuma among normal people might actually be enough to make up for the horror of this situation."_

"No." The denial came out more forcefully than Lavi had meant it to, and he felt Kanda's reluctant curiosity. "Just... trust me on this one, Yuu. So very not worth it. Kro-chan might be interesting, though. Weird, but interesting. Always wondered what it feels like when he goes all vampire. It's like he's a completely different person."

 _"Assuming you could control his Innocence at all,"_ Kanda pointed out ruthlessly. _"Remember how out of control he was when you first found him."_

"Er, true." Lavi had to concede the point. "Lenalee's might be cool, being able to walk on water or air... hey!" He grinned, the shift of muscles making him even more aware that the face he wore wasn't the one he was used to. "Aw, damn it, now why couldn't I have been on this mission with Lenalee or Miranda? That would've been a prime opportunity."

 _"Opportunity to what?"_

"To see what it's like from the other side, of course." Lavi's grin widened, waiting for the explosion he knew was coming. Kanda was far too much fun to tease.

 _"See what... no. Oh, no."_ The sheer force of the other man's indignation made Lavi stumble, and he barely recovered without dropping the body. _"That's disgusting! How could you even consider something like that?"_

"C'mon, Yuu. You telling me you never once wondered what it'd be like as a girl?" Lavi asked, highly amused. "Not saying I'd go out and get them laid or something. Just curious, is all. Little exploration couldn't hurt..."

 _"With them right there in the back of your head?"_ Kanda snapped. _"How exactly is that any different from rape?"_

"Eh. Hadn't thought of it that way." Lavi winced. "Guess you've got a point. Even if they weren't there with me, it'd still be violating them. Oh, well. It's good fantasy material for the future, anyway."

 _"Pervert. Don't even **think** about trying anything like that with me,"_ Kanda snarled, and the weight of his animosity nearly staggered Lavi for a second time.

"Nah. You ain't got anything I haven't seen before," Lavi dismissed that notion. "Where's the fun in that? Using the bathroom is gonna be a bit weird though. And bathing, for that matter. Let's hope we're not like this long enough for it to matter."

 _"Let's hope."_

They walked in silence for a while, but it wasn't a comfortable silence. Lavi was distantly aware of the shift of thoughts and emotions running through Kanda's mind, though he couldn't sense any specifics. He had to wonder how much of _his_ feelings and thoughts the other man was aware of. The thought was a sobering one. It didn't help that Kanda was clearly brooding as well, because everything Lavi could sense from him was distinctly dark in tone.

His body seemed to grow heavier the longer he walked, but Lavi resolved not to complain about it. Kanda would just say something scathing if he did. Honestly, his body might not be a finely honed machine like the swordsman's, but he was far from flabby. There was hardly an inch of him that wasn't muscle, it was just that he was _bigger_ than Kanda despite not being much taller.

"That's what he gets for being a pretty boy," he muttered under his breath, shifting his body higher again.

 _"Excuse me?"_ The ice in Kanda's voice was as sharp as Mugen, and Lavi shivered despite himself.

"Nothing! Nothing at all," he said hastily. Some battles just weren't worth fighting.

 _"Hmph."_

Wincing, Lavi made a mental note to keep his mouth shut. Speaking too softly to be overheard didn't help when the person listening was using the same ears you were. And he _really_ hoped that Kanda couldn't make out any more details of Lavi's thoughts than Lavi could of his.

"Bookman is gonna have a fit over this," he said when the silence had stretched on long enough to make him nervous. "Hell, he'll have a hard time believing it. If I wasn't in the middle of it, I wouldn't believe it either. Then again, all I'll really have to do is open my mouth." He smiled weakly. "He'll either have to accept that we're telling the truth, or assume you've lost your marbles. You and I are _nothing_ alike."

 _"Just as long as it gets fixed before we have to go back to the Order,"_ Kanda said, and Lavi grimaced at the thought.

"Yuu? If Bookman can't fix this, believe me when I say we are hunting down that witch and _forcing_ her to reverse it," he said fervently. "No way in hell am I going back like this. For one thing, they'd never stop teasing us. _Never_."

He _had_ to pause to catch his breath, bracing his shoulder against the nearest tree and bending over to take some of the strain off his back. "Nng. It's gonna take forever to get there at this rate." Panting, he wished he dared put the body down for just a moment to let him rest. He wasn't sure he'd be able to get back up again if he put it down, though. His legs were already starting to get tired.

Something tugged at his subconscious - something that wasn't Kanda's barely-felt thoughts. Frowning, he peered around through the greenery, trying to figure out what was bothering him. "Hey, Yuu," he said slowly. "Does it seem quiet to you?" Maybe Kanda's hearing was just as bad as his sight, and he hadn't noticed it until now because it wasn't as immediately obvious.

 _"I... yes. Yes it does."_ Lavi felt Kanda go on alert, and then felt the man's frustration that he couldn't _do_ anything. _"It's the middle of the day. You're making enough noise tramping along that I'm not surprised not to hear any animals close by, but there should at least be birds in the trees."_

"Fuck. I was afraid you were gonna say that." His shoulders tense, Lavi scanned the area more closely. He didn't even know what he was looking for, damn it. The subtle signals and cues he used to tell him when there were Akuma around were completely invisible to him now.

"Hey! Are we playing tag, or hide-and-seek?" he shouted, hoping to draw them out into the open where he could see them. "Either way, you just lost. I know you're there." His palms sweating, he slowly shifted his grip on his body so the weight was resting all on his left side, freeing his right hand to inch down.

"Aw, you stopped just a little too soon," a deep voice complained. "Why'd you have to get tired right then?" Three of them stepped out from behind the trees ahead, wearing ugly grins. At least they were still in human form, though Lavi suspected that wouldn't last long.

"Sorry to spoil your fun," he apologized insincerely. They didn't seem to have noticed that he was moving yet; he had to keep them distracted until he could get at his Innocence. He didn't dare drop his body or they'd shoot it first thing, so he was going to have to be clever to make up for the disadvantage. "Maybe we could play duck-duck-goose instead?"

"How about Cowboys and Injuns, like in the stories from America?" one of them suggested. It held up its hands, fingers cocked to represent guns, and the skin began to peel away from the fingers. A moment later there were real guns there, the canons of an Akuma as it started the process of shedding its human skin. "You can be the Injun!"

Now! Lavi's hand was finally far enough down to grab at... absolutely nothing. His eyes went wide as his fingers closed around air and brushed against his thigh where his hammer should have been.

 _"Idiot!"_ Kanda raged at him. _"Mugen's on my **left** hip."_

"Shit!" There was no time to correct his stupid mistake; the Akuma was already firing. Lavi threw himself to one side, hitting the ground hard and unable to roll to take the force of the impact. The body shifted, the bound arms coming up around his neck and threatening to choke him.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he swore again, struggling to get free of the hampering weight of it. He ducked out from under the arms, and found himself inches away from the barrel of an Akuma's canon. " _Shit!_ "

He lunged out of the way again, barely remembering to grab the arm of his body to drag it with him. The bullets passed through the space he'd occupied just an instant before, chewing into the soft earth and solid wood of the tree behind him. Lavi felt sweat break out on his face at how close that had been.

 _"Hurry up and draw Mugen,"_ Kanda hissed, and Lavi could feel the other man's panic equal his own.

"I don't know how to use a sword," Lavi protested, scrambling to his feet and hauling his body along as he dodged the next burst of fire. They were toying with him - the other two were still in human form, laughing at him as the first level drove him this way and that.

He ducked behind a large boulder, and felt the bullets pounding away at the other side. It would take them a few minutes to eat through the solid chunk of granite, giving him just enough breathing space to collect himself. He fumbled at the holster strapped to his body's thigh, finally managing to get his hammer loose from the straps.

"Innocence activate," he shouted as he leapt to his feet again, already bringing his arm around in a swing that would smash right through the first level. The hammer expanded rapidly as he'd commanded it to - but to his shock, the weight increased exponentially as well, dragging his arm down and throwing his aim completely off. "What the hell?"

The only reason he wasn't gunned down in the next five seconds was because the Akuma had fled, seeing the Innocence coming for him. Lavi stared at his hammer, feeling oddly hurt and betrayed as he struggled to lift it. There was no hope; it felt like it weighed half a tonne.

"What's the matter, Exorcist?" one of the remaining 'men' taunted him. "Is your toy broken?"

Desperately Lavi ordered it to shrink, and it obeyed until it was light enough for him to lift. Unfortunately, it was now too small to do more than put a dent in the solid skin of an Akuma, assuming he could even get close enough to hit it. Somehow he didn't think extending the shaft would produce any better results than expanding the head had.

He didn't dare run; that would leave his body vulnerable. He could try activating his second level abilities, but he didn't think he wanted to see what would happen if he lost control of the Fire Seal. He'd fry himself and Kanda as well as the Akuma.

Swallowing hard, he hefted the small hammer in trembling hands and set himself in a defensive stance. There was nothing for it but to go down fighting as well as he could.


	3. Chapter 3

The grating laughter of the two remaining 'human' Akuma was enough to set Lavi's nerves on edge, and he gritted his teeth. "Aw, I think the Injun's bowstring snapped," said the same one who kept taunting him.

 _"What are you doing? Draw Mugen!"_

"I told you, I don't know how to use a sword," Lavi repeated between clenched teeth. His palms were sweating badly enough that his grip was slipping on the hammer shaft, and the way his hands were shaking wasn't helping matters any. He really, really didn't want to die - not here, not now, and certainly not like _this_. How incredibly humiliating for two Exorcists to be taken out by three lousy first levels.

 _"It's not exactly difficult. The sharp end goes into the enemy,"_ Kanda snapped. _"It's not as if you're fighting another swordsman. Just hack at them!"_

"Easy for you to say," Lavi said. "I'll never get that close. And what if it doesn't activate for me? It's not my Innocence."

The first level, recovered from its fright, was drifting back down out of the sky, bright energy gathering around its canons as it prepared to fire on him. The distinctive whine of an Akuma's guns was building in the air, and Lavi figured he had approximately five seconds left to live.

 _"Just draw the fucking sword!"_

What the hell, it couldn't be any more useless than Oodzuchi Kodzuchi was at the moment. Dropping the hammer, Lavi dove to the side and this time he was able to roll to absorb the impact. The hail of deadly bullets just missed him, and the rock continued to shield his helpless body.

As he scrambled to his feet he snatched at Mugen's hilt. Kanda always made drawing the sword look so easy, like it just slid free of the sheath almost of its own accord. The reality turned out to be a lot more difficult, as he tried to turn it too fast and got the tip jammed against the inside of the saya. Cursing, Lavi yanked at it awkwardly as the other two Akuma laughed at him hysterically.

"And I'd always heard Exorcists were such big, scary bad guys," said the one who hadn't spoken before. "Don't see what the big deal is, myself." With a broad grin, it began to warp and shift, shedding its human skin as well.

 _Finally_ Lavi managed to get the blade free of the sheath. Figuring it wasn't going to do him any good to stand around waiting for them to come to him, he tightened his grip on the hilt and charged with a wild yell.

The fully transformed first level rose up out of his reach, but Lavi had been expecting that. He wouldn't be able to replicate Kanda's incredible aerobatic abilities, but a simple jump ought to be easy enough. He pushed off the ground hard, and practically flew after the monster. It was charging its guns again, but he should be able to hit it before it could fire.

Except, as he discovered when he swung and the blade met nothing but air, the unaccustomed depth perception was throwing off his normally impeccable aim. The momentum of the movement threw him off balance and sent him tumbling down to one side, and that was the only thing that saved his life as the Akuma fired again.

 _"Idiot! What the hell are you aiming at?"_

"Having both eyes is confusing me," Lavi said, scrambling back to his feet just in time to dodge another hail of bullets. The second Akuma had finished its transformation and now floated in the air beside the first; the remaining 'man' was laughing so hard it was bent double and clutching at the nearest tree.

 _"Isn't it supposed to be **harder** to hit things with no depth perception?"_

"Yeah, well, you try spending your entire life learning to compensate for a disadvantage, and then have it suddenly taken away and another one shoved on you in its place," Lavi snapped, ducking around another boulder and using it as a shield to give him a moment to catch his breath. "Several others, actually. Why don't you go try using my body, see how _you_ like it?"

 _"If I could, I would,"_ Kanda snorted. _"I certainly couldn't fuck up any more than you're doing right now."_

"Will you stop fucking criticizing me and let me concentrate on the damn fight?" Snarling, Lavi ran out from behind the boulder again, coming at the second Akuma from an oblique angle and hoping to catch it by surprise. His only hope in this battle was that first levels were awkward, lumbering things with completely non-versatile weapons. If he could access enough of Kanda's incredible natural speed, he might have a chance.

He got lucky with a wild swing, connecting with a glancing blow that took a chunk out of the Akuma's guns and staggered it. The damage was far from fatal, but it gave Lavi the opening he needed to get in closer, and the next thrust struck home in the monster's body. Remembering what he'd seen Kanda do, Lavi grabbed Mugen's hilt with both hands and wrenched it free again at an angle, ripping it out of the monster.

A moment later it exploded. He hadn't quite managed to get out of range, and the force of the blast caught him squarely in the back and threw him forward. It turned out to be a good thing, as the first Akuma had been lining up to fire on him again and its bullets went whining through the air over his head. Better yet, when Lavi rolled to his feet again he found himself directly beneath the monster, looking up at its unprotected underside.

Grinning fiercely he launched himself into the air again, and slashed his way through the tangle of root-like appendages dangling from the Akuma's belly. Mugen sang in his hands, cutting right through the Akuma's tough skin like it was paper. With a triumphant shout Lavi reached the backside of the monster and pulled free. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw the whole thing had been cut in half as if the sword's blade was as long as a tree.

It exploded too, but this time he was braced for it and managed to land in a slightly more controlled manner. Feeling like he was finally getting the hang of the weapon, Lavi rolled once more and bounced to his feet, looking around for the last one.

He didn't have to look far. While he'd been occupied with the other two, it had taken the opportunity to transform and it was now hovering right in front of him, its guns fully charged and aimed straight at him. Lavi found himself staring down the barrel of its canons, the bright energy nearly blinding him.

"Fuck _me_ ," he croaked, scrambling desperately to try to get out of the way of the coming blast. His momentum worked against him, and all he accomplished was to slip and fall on his back, now completely vulnerable and unable to strike at the Akuma that was just out of reach. Screwing his eyes shut, Lavi braced himself for the painful death that was coming.

 _"Kaichuu: Ichigen!"_

For a moment the words didn't make any sense to Lavi; he felt the sword vibrate and suddenly become lighter in his hands, and heard the humming of the Insects, but he'd been so convinced he was about to die that it took him a second to realize what was happening. He opened his eyes just in time to see the Hell's Insects tear their way through the Akuma, shredding it to tiny pieces.

The force of the explosion from such close proximity was like a giant fist pounding him into the earth, but it was a million times better than the alternative would have been. Gasping, Lavi lay sprawled over the ground, staring up at the blue sky and swaying tree branches. The forest was completely silent around him as the concussion from the explosion faded, only the wind in the leaves keeping him company.

After a while he sensed Kanda's reluctant concern. _"Are you... how much damage did you do to my body?"_

That made Lavi laugh despite himself, the sound foreign to his ears coming as it did from Kanda's throat. "We're alive. Count your blessings and move on, Yuu. Can't ask for much more than that." Groaning, he forced himself to roll to one side and pushed himself into a sitting position. It felt like every inch of his - or rather, Kanda's - body was battered and bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken or otherwise badly damaged.

Mugen had reformed and was back in its dormant state. Lavi retrieved it and tried to shake the dirt off by slashing it quickly to one side, the way he'd seen Kanda do. All he accomplished was to nearly chop his own leg off, and he grimaced. "Right, I'll just do it the hard way, then," he muttered, picking his way across the broken ground to the boulder where he'd left his body.

He shuddered to see how little of the rock was actually left; another few shots and the Akuma would have chewed right through it. Lavi had to wonder just what would happen to him if his body died, but it wasn't a question he particularly wanted to have answered. Kneeling next to the body, he used the end of his scarf to scrub the dark blade free of even the tiniest speck of dirt, refusing to give up until it was gleaming.

 _"At least you show the proper respect,"_ Kanda said grudgingly. _"If you'd tried to sheath it dirty, you'd have paid for it the moment I'm in control of my body again."_

"I'm not a total barbarian, thank you," Lavi said, his voice dry. "I know how to treat a good weapon. Just 'cause my hammer doesn't need that kind of attention doesn't mean I don't know better than to put a sword away dirty." He tried twice to slide the blade back into its saya, another move that Kanda made look simple but which apparently wasn't. Finally he gave up and pulled the saya off his belt completely, and that made it much easier to sheath it properly.

He found his hammer easily enough; it was still active, at the size it had been when he'd dropped it. As sore as he was, even that felt too heavy to lift now. He deactivated it and stood there holding it for a moment, staring down at it. "I guess it's obeying me because it's _me_ , but it's registering you as the one holding it so I feel its full weight. I'm not gonna be able to use it at all." He grimaced and shoved it into his pocket. It might not be working properly for him at the moment, but he felt much better having it on his person.

Looking down at the limp, sprawled form of his inert body, Lavi sighed. He was tired and hurting, and it was still a long way back to the town. But they couldn't stay here, not even long enough for him to rest a bit. Where there was one Akuma there could be more, and they knew the second level was still out there somewhere.

"Let's get moving," he said wearily, turning to arrange the body at his back the way it had been before. "The sooner we're back in our own bodies, the happier I'll be. I've never suffered such a humiliating fight in my life, and I never want to again."

 _"For once, we're in complete agreement."_

* * *

By the time Lavi finally staggered up to the inn where Bookman was waiting for them, the sun was low on the horizon. Kanda was seething, trapped and unable to do more than watch as Lavi pushed his body to the limits and beyond. It was ridiculous, he certainly should have been capable of travelling such a short distance even with the weight of Lavi's body on his back, but he could see how much extra effort it took Lavi to use Kanda's body.

It was beyond disconcerting to feel his body moving without any direction from him. Kanda didn't feel like he was somehow in a different part of his brain or detached from his body or anything like that; he saw and felt things exactly the same way he always had, he just couldn't so much as twitch his fingers. There was a sense of ghostly pressure against his mind that was giving him a headache, which had to be Lavi's presence or spirit or whatever it was. Occasionally he caught a fleeting impression of whatever Lavi's strongest emotion happened to be - usually panic and fear, so far.

Overall it was absolutely the most frustrating thing he'd ever experienced. And why did it have to be Lavi, of all people? Not that there was anyone Kanda would have wanted to be stuck in this situation with, but he couldn't think of too many people lower on the list than the loudmouthed idiot. Kanda generally didn't give a rat's ass what people thought of him, but the idea that even a total stranger might believe that _he_ was as stupid and obnoxious as the redhead was enough to make him cringe.

 _"Try to get in without anyone seeing us,"_ Kanda ordered. _"The last thing we need is to have the innkeeper's wife fawning over us, or gods forbid, calling a doctor."_

Lavi grunted his agreement, obviously too weary to do anything else. Kanda could feel the ache of exhaustion in his muscles, so he knew just how much effort the other man had put into getting them this far. To give Lavi some credit, he'd stubbornly refused to give up no matter how much he hurt or how tired he was.

Somehow they managed to stumble in the back door and up the stairs without drawing any attention. The tavern business was in full swing, all the locals coming for a mug of ale and maybe a bite to eat. The noise helped cover the sound of Lavi's dragging footsteps, but Kanda hoped Bookman wasn't down there with everyone else. The old man seemed more like the type to keep to himself, but maybe he'd gotten bored waiting for them.

Thankfully when Lavi knocked at the door to the room he'd been sharing with Bookman, the old man immediately called for them to come in. Lavi shouldered the door open and pushed his way inside, and Bookman jumped to his feet with a startled expression when he saw them. "What...?"

"We have a big problem, old panda," Lavi said. It was still bizarre to Kanda to feel himself speaking without having any control over what came out of his mouth. It was even stranger to hear Lavi's words in his own voice, and he wondered how Lavi heard it.

Bookman raised an eyebrow at them. "I beg your pardon?" He looked like he didn't quite believe what he'd just heard, which wasn't surprising. Kanda wasn't always as polite to the old man as he could have been, to put it lightly, but he'd certainly never called him an 'old panda'.

The next thing Lavi said was completely incomprehensible to Kanda, but it made the Bookman's eyes go wide with shock. The language sounded vaguely like Chinese, but Kanda knew enough of both Mandarin and Cantonese to be fairly certain it wasn't even an obscure dialect. Just how many languages _did_ Lavi speak, anyway? And why was he using something strange now? _"What did you say?"_ Kanda asked, confused.

To his irritation, Bookman answered in the same language, and he and Lavi fired several rapid exchanges back and forth. There were few things Kanda liked less than feeling like he was completely out of the loop, and he grew more frustrated with each word. _"Damn it, Lavi, what the hell are you **saying**?"_ he demanded.

Lavi broke off in mid-sentence and grimaced. "If I wanted you t'know what I was sayin', I'd say it in a language you understood," he pointed out.

Bookman looked surprised again. "Is he...?"

"Oh, he's still in here," Lavi said dryly. "He can see and hear everythin' I can, near as I can tell. I can hear him, and sometimes feel the edges of his emotions, but that's about it. He's got no control of the body at all. I s'ppose it's not really fair to cut him out of the conversation."

"Indeed. Set your body on the bed, and sit down before you fall over," Bookman ordered, turning away to retrieve the roll of cloth that contained his acupuncture needles.

Lavi obeyed, painfully kneeling beside the bed and dumping his burden onto the mattress. The body sprawled in an ungainly tangle of limbs, red hair mussed and half covering his face. The redhead looked younger than usual with all the life and animation drained from his face, leaving behind an oddly fragile-looking empty shell. The sight obviously disturbed Lavi more than a little; Kanda could feel the roil of the other man's emotions before Lavi turned away.

He sat right there on the floor, leaning his back against the side of the bed, looking up at Bookman with a weak grin that felt completely foreign to Kanda. "Sorry, old panda, I'll get outta your way in a minute. Just need to rest a bit. Didn't realize how _heavy_ I am!"

"Never mind that, stay where you are," Bookman said, waving at him. "You're not in the way. Just tell me everything that happened." He leaned over the redhead's body and started stripping him of jacket and shirt, baring the torso to his examination.

Lavi started with the moment they'd heard the Akuma ahead on the road, and continued talking the entire time Bookman spent examining his body. To Kanda's surprise the report was concise and factual, and contained far more detail than even Kanda remembered about each event. Much of it seemed like useless information, but Bookman gave no indication of impatience with the flood of minutiae. It was absolutely nothing like the haphazard reports he'd heard Lavi give Komui at the end of missions. Kanda honestly hadn't realized Lavi had been paying enough attention to deliver such a thorough summation of events.

 _"How do you even remember all of that?"_ he asked incredulously when Lavi finally reached the end of the second, humiliating battle against the Akuma and wound down.

He felt Lavi give a lopsided smile. "All part of my training, Yuu. I'd make a hell of a lousy record-keeper if I couldn't remember things long enough to make a record of 'em."

 _"Hmph. I just figured you still had a lot to learn."_ Kanda felt strangely disoriented, as if he'd suddenly discovered that the water in the ocean wasn't salty after all. It was still water, but... not what he'd expected.

Lavi laughed. "What, you thought I was too busy flirtin' to notice what was happenin' right under my nose?" Since that was exactly what Kanda had thought, he said nothing. That only made Lavi laugh again.

"I suppose I'll have to get used to you speaking to nothing like that," Bookman commented, shaking his head. "Not to mention hearing Lavi's speech patterns in Kanda's voice. You next." He gestured for Lavi to get up and sit where he could be examined.

With a groan Lavi hauled himself to his feet, wincing as sore muscles protested. "Ow. Sorry, Yuu, you're gonna be black and blue for a week. That last explosion hit us hard. Then again, given the way I was bouncing my body around, I probably won't be much better off, so y'can console yourself with that at least."

 _"I'm just grateful you managed not to get me killed,"_ Kanda replied. He'd have winced himself, if he could have. He could feel every ache and strain as well, and Lavi had no idea how lucky he really was. The lotus spell was already working on him, repairing the damage at an accelerated rate. If not, they'd have been in much worse shape and might not even have made it back to the town.

He'd had Bookman work on him before, though not often. Lavi shrugged off his shirt and jacket, and they sat on the edge of Bookman's bed bared to the waist as the old man crouched in front of them. To Kanda's surprise, Bookman frowned and hesitated before inserting the first needle, his dark eyes flicking rapidly back and forth over Kanda's body.

"What's wrong, old man? Your eyes giving out on you?" Lavi teased him, and Bookman drew back one fist in obvious preparation to cuff him. Lavi flinched and raised a hand in automatic - if rather futile - defence, but the blow never landed.

"Hmph. Try not to irritate me into clobbering you until you're back in your own body, boy," the old man grumbled. "Kanda doesn't deserve to pay for your bad habits. I'm trying to find the pressure points." He reached out and laid one hand just above the skin of Kanda's chest, and Kanda felt a prickling heat rush over him. "This is... I've never seen anything like this. Your body's qi was typical for someone in a deep coma, where the consciousness has been completely submerged. Kanda's is something else altogether."

"Kinda like two qi fused into one, maybe?" Lavi suggested dryly. "Or mine warping his outta place?"

"Something like that, yes, but a great deal more complicated," Bookman said, his voice absent as he slowly trailed his hand over Kanda's chest, keeping it just above the skin. "There's a third power involved, twined through both of yours and drawing them closer together. I don't think I can extricate any one energy flow from the other two without doing permanent damage."

 _"I don't much like the sound of 'permanent damage', but there has to be **something** he can do,"_ Kanda said, struggling against rising fear. He'd been clinging to the idea that Bookman would be able to reverse the spell or curse or whatever it was, refusing to contemplate any other possibility.

"I don't like the sound of it either, Yuu, believe me," Lavi said unhappily. "C'mon, gramps. I might tease you sometimes, but I know you're the best. You gotta be able to do something."

With a sigh, Bookman rocked back on his heels and lifted his hand. "I could try, but I might leave half your consciousness behind, or mix the two of you up completely. Do you want to risk it?"

"Er..." Lavi hesitated, and Kanda could feel his fear and indecision. "I dunno. Yuu? It's your body, what do you think?"

Kanda thought about what it would be like to be trapped like this any longer, helpless in his own body and forced into constant close contact with Lavi. Then he thought about what it would be like if something went wrong and they ended up both split between the two bodies, or if he wound up in Lavi's body, or something equally horrid.

 _"Let's not risk it just yet,"_ he reluctantly concluded. _"It'd be better to find that Gypsy bitch and make her reverse it. We'll leave this as a last resort."_

"Yeah, I agree," Lavi said with a relieved sigh. "We both think we should try to find the Romany first," he told Bookman. "They took off and left us there, but they can't've gone too far. Anyway that second level will still be after them, and we can't just leave it to go on a rampage."

"I concur," Bookman nodded. "Very well. I suggest the two of you get some rest. I'll look after your body here, and tomorrow morning we'll see what we can do about tracking the Romany. Perhaps we can hire a horse to carry your body so we won't be forced to leave it behind."

"Okay." With an effort Lavi heaved himself to his feet again, and gave his master a weary smile. "I guess even we can't get into too much trouble if we're asleep. Hell, maybe if I fall asleep you'll be able to control the body again, Yuu."

 _"That would be nice,"_ Kanda said sourly. _"Not that I'd be able to do much but sleep myself, as badly as you've exhausted me. Us. Yourself?"_

"Eh. Don't fret the pronouns, you'll drive yourself nuts," Lavi advised with a soft chuckle. "G'night, Bookman. Don't poke too much at my poor body."

Bookman rolled his eyes and waved them off. "Go. Before you say something that irritates me enough to make me forget that it wouldn't be your body I was pounding." With another laugh, Lavi made good his escape.

* * *

Everything stood out in sharp relief, as if someone had aimed an unbearably bright light at the room and highlighted everything. It was like looking at the world through a giant magnifying glass, and Kanda felt like he was drowning in details. Despite that, everything had a curiously flat quality to it that made it seem two-dimensional.

It wasn't just sight, though that was the most obvious assault on his senses. Sounds seemed magnified far out of proportion, and even smells pressed heavily down on him. He could smell blood and other less pleasant fluids, and a scent he could only call 'green' that he associated with plants. A sharp, disgusting odour overlay everything, a scent he didn't consciously recognize but which his subconscious told him was 'Akuma'.

Indeed, one of the monsters was right ahead of him, a second level. Automatically Kanda reached for Mugen, only to find himself already holding something. It wasn't his sword, but... a hammer? Oodzuchi Kodzuchi? Why was he holding Lavi's Innocence?

"Ohhh, no. Not this," Lavi moaned from somewhere nearby. Kanda looked around, and immediately regretted it. The shift and play of texture and shape made him dizzy, but he did see someone standing beside him.

He'd have assumed it was Lavi, except there was no mistaking that white hair and the green fire of Innocence that ringed the boy's shoulder. It was Allen, it had to be. Where was Lavi?

Allen screamed suddenly and clutched at his eye. Kanda had only seen the second level of his curse activate a few times, but he didn't recall that it had ever seemed painful to the boy before. It was slower than usual to form, the dark lens and silver gear almost melting into being beneath the boy's clutching fingers.

Then everything went dark - not as if he'd gone unconscious, but as if the bright light had suddenly been dimmed and everything had gone black and white. Yet the staggering level of detail was still there. Kanda wished it wasn't; everything looked like it was dead or dying, even inanimate objects like the walls.

"No no no, don't look don't look," Lavi pleaded. Kanda still couldn't see him, but he found his attention drawn inexorably back to the Akuma before him.

There was something hovering over it, an ethereal shape that was not quite a part of it but somehow connected to it. It was so twisted and warped that at first his brain refused to comprehend what he was seeing, trying to protect him from the gruesomeness of it. After an awful moment he realized that he was seeing the Akuma's soul, the trapped spirit of the human that was bound into it.

It was the single most horrifying, sickening thing he'd ever seen in his life. Kanda shuddered, desperate to scrub the sight right out of his memory and yet unable to look away.

With a cry, he wrenched his eyes away from it and found himself abruptly in true blackness. His body shuddered and writhed, out of his control, and he couldn't see anything at all. He flailed for a moment, panicked, before he realized what was happening.

He'd been dreaming, and he'd forced himself awake - but _Lavi_ was still asleep, and Kanda still wasn't in control of his body. It was Lavi who twisted and turned in the grip of the nightmare, his breathing rapid and ragged, making little whimpering sounds in the back of his throat. Remembering the dream, Kanda wondered. He'd never seen anything like that before - could that possibly have been Lavi's dream that he'd somehow been sharing?

If so, he didn't want to leave the other man trapped in it a moment longer than he had to. Kanda might not like Lavi much, but he wouldn't have subjected a rabid dog to something that horrifying. _"Lavi. Lavi! **Lavi**!"_

Lavi didn't react, and Kanda growled in frustration. He didn't even know if the man could hear him, and he certainly couldn't shake him awake. With no real idea what he was doing, he reached out and 'pushed' back against the pressure he'd come to assume was Lavi's presence inside his mind.

Immediately he was assaulted by a much sharper awareness of Lavi's terror and panic, the emotions wrapping themselves around him so tightly they almost felt like his own. He could hear Lavi's incoherent pleas again, echoing in his ear the same way they had in the dream. _"Lavi. Wake up!"_

The whole world seemed to wrench itself around, and suddenly Kanda could see again. Lavi had opened his eyes and was lying still in the bed, panting for air and trembling with the aftermath of the dream. "Yuu?" he croaked, and Kanda felt his uncertainty and a sense of renewed pressure against his mind.

 _"Ow, damn it, don't push at me like that,"_ Kanda snapped, struggling to pull away from the other man's consciousness again. It felt like trying to free himself from a flood of stick taffy, clinging to him and refusing to let go completely.

"Nng. You started it," Lavi complained, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "You're givin' me a headache."

 _"I was trying to wake you up,"_ Kanda told him impatiently. _"If you'd rather I left you to the nightmare next time..."_

"No!" Lavi's denial was immediate and panicked, and he lifted his hands away to stare at the ceiling. "No, anything you wanna do to get me outta _that_ dream, I'm more than happy with. I can handle a little headache. How'd you know?"

 _"I... think I dreamed it too,"_ Kanda admitted. _"What **was** all that?"_

"That's what an Akuma looks like to Allen," Lavi said, his breathing finally starting to steady. He began untangling himself from the sodden bedclothes, grimacing at the feel of cold sweat on his body. "Toldja it wasn't worth it. It _is_ a curse, even if it ends up bein' useful in the end."

 _"I figured that out for myself, thank you,"_ Kanda snorted. _"I meant the rest of it. It was... overwhelming. Everything was..."_

He struggled to find words to describe it, but Lavi seemed to understand. "Uh-huh. Welcome to the way I see the world. Now d'you understand why I say using your eyes is like trying to see through a fog?"

Kanda was stunned for a moment. _"You see everything like that?"_

"Up to the moment when Allen's curse activated, yeah," Lavi nodded. "My dreams are usually an accurate reproduction of something I've lived through. It's the downside of having a memory as good as mine."

He shrugged and swung his legs out of bed, stretching. Standing, he made his way over to the window, the floorboards cold beneath their feet. Kanda could feel the chill radiating off the glass as Lavi opened the shutters and looked out over the moonlit world. They stared out over the landscape, and Kanda tried to picture what it would have looked like from Lavi's body.

"Mind if I stay up for a bit? I know you're prob'ly as exhausted as I am, but I never sleep well right after that dream," Lavi said softly. "Silly, I know. It's just a dream, but..."

Kanda could still feel the other man's emotions more clearly than before, and it wasn't hard to sense the fear, unease, and revulsion that were prompting Lavi to stay awake. If he tried to sleep again now he'd probably just go right back to the same dream - and Kanda would likely be dragged right back with him.

 _"No, I don't mind,"_ he hastily assured the other man. _"Uh... can you..."_

"Feel what you're thinkin' more clearly?" Lavi finished for him. "Yeah. Whatever you did to wake me up, seems to've connected us more. Or hell, maybe it would've happened anyway. Bookman did say the third power was drawing us closer together. He might've meant it was still increasing the effect."

 _"Then we'd better find that witch fast,"_ Kanda said grimly. _"It's bad enough having you in control of my body, I don't want you in control of my **thoughts** as well."_

"We'll find her," Lavi said confidently, still staring out into the night. "Somehow."

The words would have been far more reassuring if Kanda hadn't been able to sense Lavi's own fear and apprehension. It wasn't hard to tell the assurance was a lie.


	4. Chapter 4

"D'ya think we'll actually catch up with them this time?" Lavi asked, squinting at the road ahead. Kanda peered as well, searching for some indication that the Gypsies were nearby. It still irritated him that he couldn't see anything Lavi wasn't looking at, but he supposed he should be grateful he had any access to his senses at all.

"That cracked axle we found must have belonged to them," Bookman repeated, irritated. It wasn't the first time they'd been over it and the old man was clearly getting tired of reassuring them, but Lavi and Kanda were both badly in need of it. "It would have slowed them considerably, and judging by the stories from the people in the last town we passed through, we weren't more than a day behind them to start with."

"Which would make this the third time we've been that close to them, and they've given us the slip both other times," Lavi replied. His hands tightened on the lead rein, making the horse carrying his body snort and stamp restively. "I'll give the woman this much, she wasn't kidding around when she said she could use her magic to hide them. How are they staying so far ahead of us, anyway? I know we're on foot, but the wagons shouldn't be any faster, 'specially not with all the rain lately turning the roads into..."

"If you saved your breath for walking, we might move faster," Bookman pointed out, tucking his hands into his sleeves.

"Right, like that's gonna happen," Lavi snorted, but Kanda noticed he didn't continue speaking after that.

 _"Hmph. Nice to know I'm not the only one who gets sick of your chatter."_ Kanda felt rather vindicated by the old man's words, though certainly Bookman had put up with Lavi's babbling much longer than Kanda would have.

Lavi frowned, but Kanda could feel that it was concern rather than irritation that prompted the expression. "He's worried," Lavi murmured, low enough to keep his master from hearing him. "Normally he just tunes me out and lets me run on. He only bothers to shut me up if he's thinkin' hard about somethin'."

The idea that Bookman was worried did nothing to soothe Kanda's own nerves. The old man had checked their qi again the night before, and he'd flatly refused to say anything but 'it hasn't gotten any better' afterwards. Kanda and Lavi had spent a large portion of the night staring up at the ceiling trying to ignore each other's fear, without much success.

 _"They can't stay ahead of us forever."_ Kanda heard the edge of desperation in his own voice, but there was nothing he could do about it. _"Surely they can't."_

"I sure's hell hope not, because I dunno how much more of this we can take," Lavi agreed. "I like you and all, Yuu, but this is a little too much male bonding for my delicate sensibilities."

Despite himself Kanda snorted in amusement at the idea of Lavi possessing any kind of sensibility, let alone the delicate type. He felt Lavi smile in response, an expression he was almost starting to get used to wearing. He had to wonder what the rest of the Order would think, if they could see him right now.

Lavi laughed softly. "They'd probably think you were hopped up on something," he commented. "A smile from you has gotta be some kinda landmark event. Almost be worth going back like this just to see their faces."

 _"I'll skip it, thanks just the..."_ Kanda stopped in mid-sentence, and felt a shiver go through his soul.

"What?" Lavi cocked his head curiously, scanning the area around them. "Didja see something?"

 _"I... didn't say that out loud,"_ Kanda said slowly. _"The thought about wondering what the Order would make of me smiling, I didn't **say** that."_

"Sure you did," Lavi insisted, but Kanda felt the rising fear and unease within him. "I mean, you must've. We established the second day that I can only hear what you 'say'. You just don't realize you said it."

Kanda wasn't nearly as convinced of that. The change was gradual enough that it was hard to track, but his perception of Lavi's emotions had definitely increased over the last week. It seemed to happen most markedly when they slept, as if sharing each other's dreams was a connection point drawing them closer together.

 _"It's not as if I'm physically speaking,"_ he pointed out grimly. _"Technically I suppose I'm only thinking all of it. It would make sense for you to be able to pick up more as time goes on."_

"Can you get anything of what I'm thinking?" Lavi asked, shifting nervously. Kanda could feel that the other man was upset and worried, and there was something specific that he didn't want Kanda to know about or be able to read in his thoughts.

Well, that was only fair; Kanda had things he didn't particularly want Lavi to discover about him, too. With an effort he wrenched his train of thought off that particular track, lest he give himself away without meaning to. _"I'm not getting anything concrete right at the moment. Should I try to?"_

"No," Lavi shook his head, his grin feeling more than a little sickly. "No, leave it be for now. Poking at it only ever seems to make it worse. We've gotta learn to..."

"Hush," Bookman snapped abruptly, throwing out his hand to stop them from continuing forward. Lavi's mouth snapped closed so fast there was an audible click, and he stood motionless. The horse snorted, and he reached up to stroke its nose, quieting it. All the while Bookman stood in the middle of the path listening intently.

Lavi and Kanda both strained to hear whatever it was, but there was only the soft chirping of the birds in the trees high above. Lavi's intense frustration flooded over Kanda, making Kanda feel defensive. After seeing the world through Lavi's dreams he couldn't deny that the redhead's senses were in all ways sharper than his, but he didn't like the feeling that Lavi regarded his body as inadequate.

Lavi was practically vibrating with the need to ask what his master heard, and Kanda was mildly impressed that he managed to keep his mouth shut. He felt the other man roll his eyes. "I heard _that_ ," Lavi whispered sourly.

With a frustrated noise, Bookman shook his head. "I can hear something in the distance that might be shouting, but I can't pinpoint the location. It doesn't sound like it's coming from ahead of us, so either the trail curves or they've gone off the road entirely."

"Could be a crossroads, too," Lavi pointed out. "Damn it! I wish I could... uh, Bookman?" He'd turned back to face his master, and Kanda spotted the column of smoke rising above the trees a moment after Lavi. Bookman followed the line of their pointing hand, and his eyes narrowed.

"Behind us? That's impossible," he snapped. "There hasn't been a branch in the road since we saw the axle. The forest is too thick for them to have taken the wagons through the trees."

Chewing on his lower lip, Lavi was thinking hard. Kanda could sense the way his mind was racing, but couldn't catch the individual thoughts. "Y'know, I saw a map of this area maybe a year ago," he said slowly. "Seems to me there _should_ have been a crossroad about half a mile back. Just a little one, but enough for the wagons to take."

"She must have hidden it somehow," Bookman said grimly. "It's too early for them to have made camp, and that smoke is too dark to be from a campfire. I think we'd better hurry."

"Great. We oughta get there about sunset," Lavi muttered, looping the reins around his fist and urging the horse to turn around. Bookman was already running back the way they'd come, and Lavi hurried after him with the horse trotting at his heels. "I want my hammer!"

 _"You couldn't take the horse on it anyway,"_ Kanda reminded him, though he too chafed at the slow pace. Lavi's mastery of his body had improved greatly over the last week, but just walking for the whole day still tired him more than it should have. Sustaining a run for any length of time would likely leave them aching with weariness.

"I still want my hammer," Lavi insisted. "That second level may be there when we catch up."

That was true, and Kanda would have grimaced if he could. Lavi had tried several times to coax his hammer into working properly for him, but it remained stubbornly at its full weight, rendering it unusable. They'd proved in the last fight that he _could_ use Mugen if it was absolutely necessary, but Kanda fervently hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

Lavi saved his breath for running after that, and he needed it just to keep up with Bookman. Kanda was astonished by how fast the old man could move when he wanted to. "It should be just ahead," Lavi called when they'd run for a few minutes.

"I see it," Bookman replied, sounding disgusted. "There."

He pointed at a stretch of roadside that looked utterly unremarkable to Kanda, but Lavi made a similar disgusted noise. "Oh, geez. How could we have missed somethin' so obvious?"

 _"Obvious **how**?"_ Kanda demanded, baffled. Ahead of them Bookman turned sharply and appeared to be running straight at a tree, but he passed right through it and vanished on the other side. _"It looks exactly like every other bit of forest we've passed."_

"Too much like it," Lavi said. "It's a perfect reflection of the side of the road directly across from it, right down to the last bit of moss and blade of grass."

Was it? Sensing Kanda's continued confusion, Lavi obligingly glanced at the other side of the road, but Kanda couldn't have said one way or the other. It _all_ looked the same to him. The horse snorted and balked when Lavi tried to lead it straight into the trees after Bookman, which at least made Kanda feel a little better. He wasn't the only one who was fooled by the spell, even if the only thing on his side was a dumb animal.

"Hurry up!" Bookman ordered from somewhere ahead of them. Lavi finally had to cover the horse's eyes briefly with his scarf and lead it forward until they passed beyond the illusion of the trees. As Lavi wrapped the scarf hastily over his body again, Kanda got a look back along their path. The crossroads was clearly visible; from this side the spell didn't seem to have any effect.

Now Kanda could hear the screaming from up ahead, accompanied by the too-familiar sound of an Akuma's canons. Lavi forced himself to run faster, catching up to his master inch by torturous inch. The horse trotted quickly at his heels, and Kanda almost felt sorry for the redhead, thinking about the bruises Lavi was going to suffer after being bounced around tied to the saddle like a piece of baggage. At least he'd _be_ back in his own body, and that was the important thing to both of them.

They rounded a long curve in the path, and the Gypsy caravan finally came into sight ahead of them. Lavi's eyes widened and he sucked in a sharp breath, and Kanda couldn't blame him. A glowing dome of power protected the tight circle of wagons this time. Standing on a roof, Marda's hair whipped around her in the breeze caused by the flight of the monsters, her hands raised above her to create the apex of the shield. From their protected position the Gypsy men were firing rifles and even throwing knives and pots at the Akuma. It was a futile effort, of course, but the fact that Marda had managed to hold them off this long was nothing short of a miracle.

The Gypsies weren't entirely without casualties. Several wagons outside the shielded area were nothing more than smoking ruins, and Kanda could see charred clothes that had fallen when their wearers had been turned to dust by the Akuma virus. The grotesque monsters whirled around and around the shield, searching for a way past the defences. Above it all the second level hovered, and Kanda wondered what its picture of a man standing before some kind of altar with a wooden wand meant.

Even as he watched the man in the picture lifted the wand, and a bolt of fire came blasting down to strike the shield. Marda cried out and went to her knees, but kept her hands in the air. The shield buckled briefly but held. It was obvious she wasn't going to be able to keep it in place much longer.

"Hey, big guy! Why don't'cha try picking on someone your own size," Lavi shouted, quickly looping the reins around the ruins of a tree so the horse wouldn't be able to run away with his body. He fumbled with Mugen, trying to get it free of the sheath. At least this time he didn't get it jammed, even if the draw wasn't exactly impressively graceful.

"Exorcists," the second level hissed, sounding more delighted than frightened. "I'd hoped you would come back and play. You won't catch me off guard again."

Bookman was circling around to the side, his eyes on the second level. "You take care of the first levels," he called back to them. "Leave the level two to me."

 _"Does he even **have** any offensive abilities?"_ Kanda asked, startled by the order.

"Course he does," Lavi snorted. "What, d'you think he's nobly sacrificing himself or something? Give me a break. He's right, we can't handle that thing right now." He set himself, firmed his grip on Mugen's hilt, and charged straight for the nearest first level. It was hampered by the press of other Akuma around it, and couldn't get out of the way fast enough.

Belatedly Kanda gave the mental command to activate his Innocence, and the dull black blade turned to shining silver just before Lavi struck the monster. He could and had dispatched first levels without bothering to activate the blade, but he didn't know if it would work as well for Lavi.

The silver fire of the blade sliced right through the Akuma, and Lavi whooped as he rolled to get out of the way of the resulting explosion. Bouncing to his feet, he slashed at another of the Akuma, driving it back in an attempt to avoid being struck by the blade. It fetched up against the solid barrier of Marda's shield, and Lavi destroyed it before it had a chance to escape.

"Ha! This isn't so bad," Lavi crowed, swinging Mugen before him and looking for his next target. "I think I'm startin' to get the hang of this."

 _"Don't count yourself a master swordsman just yet,"_ Kanda retorted. _"You've still got a long way to go. And watch where you're going!"_

Too late Lavi looked down, just as his foot hooked in the protruding root Kanda had caught sight of from the corner of his eye. With an 'oof' of displaced air Lavi went down hard, throwing his right arm out to the side so he wouldn't land on Mugen and impale them both on Kanda's own blade.

 _"Pay attention, idiot,"_ Kanda raged at him, frustrated at his own helplessness and more than happy to take it out on Lavi.

Wheezing for air, Lavi couldn't reply. He saw the next two Akuma heading towards them at the same time Kanda did, and rolled quickly to put himself under the ruined hulk of one of the wagons. The Akuma's bullets struck the wood above them and made it groan in warning, but it would protect them long enough for Lavi to get his breath back.

Above them Bookman was crouched on a tree branch, firing needles from a scroll towards the second level. He looked frustrated, and Kanda saw why when Lavi scrambled back out from beneath the wagon. The needles were bouncing harmlessly off a shield the Akuma had erected, its picture now one of a laughing man seated regally on a throne.

Lavi slashed at another tight group of Akuma, managing to catch one with a glancing strike before they all scattered. He ran after them, sword flailing, and Kanda had to fight the urge to tell him everything he was doing wrong. He managed not to say anything only because he knew how much it would infuriate _him_ if their positions had been reversed and Lavi tried to tell him the right and wrong way to use Oodzuchi Kodzuchi in the middle of a fight.

At least, he thought he'd kept his comments to himself, until Lavi growled, "Yeah, all right, I _know_ I'm doin' it wrong. I told you I don't know how to use a sword." But he firmed his grip on Mugen with both hands and stopped waving it around, bracing for impact with the nearest Akuma instead.

The sound of a horse screaming in fear distracted them both, and Lavi jerked around to see that the Akuma had finally noticed the helpless animal tied to the tree. Two of them hovered above it, guns charging. Lavi skidded to a halt and reversed his momentum with an effort, forgetting all about the first levels behind him. Kanda could feel the man's terror spilling across their link, threatening to swamp them both.

Panicked, the horse tossed it head hard and managed to snap the leather reins. It reared in place, pawing at the air in a show of aggressive defiance. The action probably saved Lavi's life, but it was a fatal mistake for the horse. The bullets struck the horse squarely in the chest, and the animal's mass protected Lavi's body. The horse _shrieked_ in pain and fear as the black stars spread rapidly over its body, and Kanda sincerely hoped he would never hear anything like that sound again in his life.

The hapless animal exploded into dust as the virus in its system broke down its cellular structure, leaving its tack and Lavi's body to tumble to the ground. Lavi ran for it, but he'd come halfway around the circumference of the shield and there was no way he would get there in time to protect his body.

Worse, the whole thing had drawn the attention of the second level. "What's this?" the Akuma said gleefully. "Leaving one of your own unattended? Tsk, tsk. The Tower! Like an act of God, the bolt from the sky is unavoidable."

"Shit! Bookman!" Lavi cried desperately as the card-shaped monster spun in place and the picture reformed into the burning ruin of a tower. Kanda could smell ozone and hear the ominous rumble of thunder, and the Akuma laughed as a bolt of lightning cracked down out of the blue sky.

"Heaven's Compass. East Crime!" Bookman's shout was nearly drowned out by the deafening thunder, but the area around Lavi's body suddenly vanished behind a bristling ball of needles so thick they were a solid mass. The lightning struck the needles and drained harmlessly through them into the ground, as if it had hit a lightning rod.

The old man jumped down out of the trees to land beside it, his hands folded in a gesture of concentration. "I've got it," he told Lavi gruffly as the Akuma howled in frustration. "Concentrate on your fight."

With a grim smile and a shaky salute, Lavi turned his attention to the two first levels that had killed the horse. "That was _way_ too damned close," he muttered as he threw himself at the nearest one. "Damn it, we need backup on this. There might be two of us in here, but we only count as about half an Exorcist at the moment, and one and a half is not enough to handle a second level this powerful."

 _"Well I doubt another Exorcist is going to appear out of the woods, so you'll just have to do what you can,"_ Kanda retorted scathingly, though his anger was a thin veneer over his own fear. What would happen to him if Lavi's body was destroyed? Would Lavi vanish as well, or would Kanda be stuck in here with him forever? Gods, that was a horrifying thought.

"Nice t'know you care, Yuu," Lavi growled, slashing and chopping at the Akuma. He landed several glancing blows before finally driving a thrust home, and the two monsters were close enough together that the explosion of the first destroyed the second as well.

Kanda had the grace to feel a hint of shame, realizing Lavi had been able to follow his thoughts. _"I... didn't mean it quite that way,"_ he said awkwardly.

"Uh-huh, sure you didn't," Lavi snorted. "Save it for someone who can't read your mind. Shit!" The clap of thunder warned him just in time to dive to one side, narrowly avoiding the lightning bolt that had been aimed at him.

The second level had apparently decided there was no point in trying to get through Bookman's defence, and had come after them instead. It laughed as it threw bolt after bolt at them, the lightning crashing down around them like an eerie reversal of the attack Lavi had used against it the last time they'd fought.

"Yuu, the Insects," Lavi prompted him through gritted teeth, ducking and weaving through the remaining trees to try to avoid the lightning. He caught the edge of one blast on his shoulder, and cried out as his entire left arm went numb. Kanda could feel tingles of electricity racing over their whole body, and their heart was pounding with reaction to the jolt.

At least it hadn't been the right shoulder, or Lavi probably would have dropped the sword. _"Kaichuu: Ichigen,"_ Kanda snapped, praying he would be able to control them. Last time he'd only needed to send them blasting straight ahead at point blank range, but this time he was going to need more finesse.

Mugen's blade dissolved into the familiar buzzing forms of the Insects, and they shot up and out. Their flight path was more than a little ragged as Kanda struggled to drive them in the direction he wanted them to go, but they did obey him in the end. The second level evaded them easily enough, but the two first levels that had been hovering behind it weren't so fortunate. They exploded in a burst of light and heat, and he sent the Insects in search of further prey.

There were only a few scattered first levels over the caravan now, and Kanda dispatched them one by one. The second level spun in place once again, and Kanda felt their stomach drop as a new picture formed.

"Strength!" the Akuma shouted, and the picture that formed was of a woman with her hand resting on the head of a tame lion. "Brute force is not the only way to tame the beast."

A sense of unbearable pressure settled over the entire area, as if the air had suddenly grown ten times as heavy. Lavi went to his knees, clutching at the nearest tree to keep from falling completely flat on his face and struggling just to breathe. The Insects faltered and began to fall, unable to handle the strain of flying, and Kanda desperately recalled them into the blade before he lost control of them entirely. Mugen reformed, but it was useless if Lavi couldn't even get to his feet.

There was a high-pitched scream, and the glowing shield protecting the Gypsies collapsed in a shower of sparks. Lavi forced his head up just in time for them to see Marda fall from the wagon roof, her body limp. "Shit, no," he moaned, the words choked in his throat from the difficulty he was having just breathing.

Kanda felt Lavi gathering his strength, and with a massive effort of will the other man slowly forced himself back to his feet. He lifted Mugen, panting hard in the heavy air, and tried to take aim at the second level. "Soon as I get it aimed, summon the Insects," he wheezed, fighting to get the sword high enough. "We _have_ to take it out."

Frankly Kanda doubted the Insects would get more than a few feet in this oppressive pressure, but he agreed it was the best chance they had. He marshalled his own strength, focusing his attention on exactly what he wanted the Hell's Insects to do.

"Now," Lavi exclaimed, the muscles in their arm screaming in protest as he managed to lift the sword high enough to point directly at the second level.

 _"Kaichuu..."_

"Needles of Spells: North Crime!" The unexpected shout from Bookman made Lavi's focus waver, and Kanda swore as Mugen dropped to point at the ground again. They both watched, wide-eyed, as a hail of tiny dark shapes flew through the air towards the Akuma. Kanda was a little awed. There had to be a thousand needles in the air, maybe more, and he couldn't imagine the effort it had to be taking the old man to keep them flying straight.

The Akuma spun in place, probably to activate the same power that had let it run away the last time, but it never got a chance. The needles struck it in a thundering wave, the sound almost deafening as they all slammed home. Kanda thought he heard it shriek in pain, and then all that was left was another bristling ball of deadly points hanging in the sky.

The crushing pressure lifted abruptly, and Lavi staggered as he suddenly didn't have to fight to stay upright. "Well." He grinned, peering up at the sphere of metal. "I guess that's the end of..."

Without warning the ball exploded, showering a hail of deadly needles everywhere. From the Gypsies came shrieks and screams of agony, and Lavi threw himself to the ground with his arms covering his head. Kanda heard him grunt in pain as the needles struck, and felt the searing agony of impact in a dozen places over their back and legs. One needle drove itself right through their left hand, drawing a line of blood down their cheek before burying itself completely in the earth.

Cautiously Lavi looked up to see the Akuma spinning in place yet again. It was battered and ragged, full of holes where the needles had punched through it, but it wasn't down yet. "Chariot! The journey is the destination." Its voice was pained, but its powers were apparently still working. It vanished the same way it had before.

Groaning, Lavi forced himself slowly into a sitting position. He lifted his right hand to touch the stinging line of blood on their cheek, then glanced down and grimaced at the bloody hole that had been punched into their other hand. "I _really_ hope those needles aren't contaminated with the Akuma virus after being in one," he muttered, shuddering. Carefully he started removing the ones that were still buried in their body.

 _"I'm immune to the virus, so you're fine either way,"_ Kanda told him reluctantly.

"You're what?" Lavi's eyes widened, and Kanda felt his shock and surprise. It was followed by a calculating thoughtfulness that Kanda didn't like in the least, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Then Lavi glanced at the circle of remaining wagons, and everything else was pushed out by fear. "We might be, but the Gypsies aren't," he pointed out. "C'mon, we gotta find out what happened to Marda."

He hauled himself to his feet again and headed for the wagons. Bookman met them just outside the circle. "Your body is safe enough for the moment," he said in reply to Lavi's worried look. "I hurt the Akuma badly enough that I doubt it will return soon. There may be others I can help here."

Lavi nodded. "All right. You tend the wounded, and we'll find the fortune-teller and make her remove the curse," he said. "If she's still alive, anyway."

 _"She has to be,"_ Kanda said, feeling desperation creeping up on him again at the thought. _"If she was dead the spell would end. Isn't that how these things are supposed to work?"_

"Your guess is as good as mine," Lavi shrugged, bending to look at each wounded or dead body they passed. Thankfully the wagons seemed to have shielded most people from the worst of the explosion of needles; the outer sides of the wagons bristled with metallic shards, but only a fraction of people had worse than a scratch or three. Also thankfully it looked like the needles had _not_ been contaminated with the virus, as nobody was collapsing into dust.

Kanda spotted her first, from the corner of Lavi's eyes. _"Over there,"_ he said urgently, and Lavi turned. The Gypsy woman had been propped up against the side of one of the wagons and was being tended by two others, but they made no effort to stop Lavi from approaching. Her eyes were open and she didn't have any obvious injuries, but Kanda had seen that expression on people before. It was the look of someone who knew they were dying, and that nothing could be done to stop it.

Crouching before her, Lavi studied her in silence for a moment. Kanda could feel his mind racing. "You don't look so good," Lavi commented at last. "I'll call my master over. Bookman can..."

"There is no point," she rasped, and the words triggered a coughing fit. One of her attendants held a scarf to her mouth, and when she removed it again there were flecks of red staining the bright yellow fabric. When he saw that, Kanda knew she was right. She must be suffering severe internal bleeding, and there wasn't much Bookman would be able to do for her.

Seeing their understanding, she gave them a ghost of a smile. "You were right after all, my young friends. In my arrogance, I thought I could hide from her long enough for you to find the solution to my curse, and deal with her. I was wrong. I should have listened when you warned me how fast she would return." She coughed again, harder this time, and for a moment Kanda thought she wouldn't be able to stop.

"Lift the curse," Lavi demanded when she'd caught her breath again. Kanda was a little surprised by the other man's bluntness - he'd have expected Lavi to go all sentimental and plead for her to save her strength, or something.

"I cannot," Marda shook her head weakly. "I have not the strength. It will remain beyond my death; you will have to accept my geas to find your way out of the binding."

"If you can't remove it, then tell us the answer to it," Lavi insisted, his hands clenching. "Marda, y'can't leave us like this, we're the next thing to helpless." She said nothing, and his eyes narrowed. Kanda felt his anger, a surprisingly cold emotion. "You wouldn't lift it even if you could, would you?"

She laughed, triggering another coughing fit. "No, I would not," she agreed with a mocking smile. "You are beginning to learn the lessons you will need to survive, but you are yet far from the truths you need to understand and accept. Become the deadly swords I know you can be, and do not let the tempering break you."

She coughed again, and this time it went on and on. It was obvious that she was dying, unable to catch her breath between spasms. Red blood coated her lips and spattered the front of her blouse.

Roughly Lavi caught her by the shoulders and shook her, apparently uncaring that he was probably hurting her worse. "Damn it, witch, take the fucking curse off!" Kanda could feel his desperation and fear beneath that icy anger, and for once he found himself in agreement with Lavi one hundred percent. They could _not_ remain like this.

It was no use. She clutched at their arms, her eyes wide as she fought futilely for air. In the next moment she shuddered and collapsed, her weight heavy and her eyes glazing over. Her spirit was gone; all that was left was the empty shell.

Gritting his teeth, Lavi dropped her abruptly and jumped to his feet. The damage to their body from the needles was almost entirely gone, but not even the lotus spell could heal them from the curse that had been placed on them. Marda had spoken the truth; there was no indication that the power binding them together was weakening with her death.

"Bookman. Bookman!" Lavi shouted, searching frantically for his master. When he spotted the old man hunched over a young boy, tending to the wounds he'd picked up from the hail of needles, Lavi headed for him at a run.

"She's dead," he told his master, skidding to a stop in front of the old man. "She wouldn't lift the damned spell, and now she's dead. You have to do somethin', _now_. Get me outta here, I don't care what the risks are. Right?"

 _"Right,"_ Kanda agreed grimly. _"I don't like the way you're starting to be able to pick up on thoughts I don't mean to share. We have to get out of this."_

Somehow he wasn't entirely surprised when the Bookman looked up at them with an unhappy expression and shook his head. "I can't," the old man admitted. "When I checked you last night, it was already too late to try. You're bound too tightly together."

"Gods _damn_ it." Lavi turned and punched at the nearest solid object, which fortunately was a half-burned wooden wall that gave easily under the impact of his fist. "We can't stay like this."

"Her words to you at the time she placed it on you indicate there must be a solution you can find on your own," Bookman pointed out. "We'll just have to shift our focus to figuring out what the answer is."

"Yeah, right. Easier said than done," Lavi growled. "I'm s'pposed to accept my heart, and Yuu's gotta let people get close to him? Never happen."

Bookman frowned, clearly unhappy at the reminder of the terms of the spell. "It's far from an ideal situation," he agreed.

 _"And that damned second level is still out there somewhere,"_ Kanda said. _"We're sitting ducks like this. We **need** reinforcements."_

"Or better yet, to let someone else take care of it entirely," Lavi agreed with a sigh. "There's only one thing we can do now. Go back to headquarters, and hope somebody there can come up with a solution."

They all looked automatically to the west, towards headquarters. Kanda grimaced at the thought of what they would face there, but Lavi was right. If he ever wanted to be alone inside his body again, they had no other choice.

Which meant they had no choice at all. There was no way in hell he was spending one moment longer than was necessary trapped and helpless in his own body, with Lavi's mind bearing down on his until it became hard to tell where he stopped and Lavi started. The only question was how much worse it would get before they found a way out of it, and how much permanent damage would be done.


	5. Chapter 5

"We're never gonna hear the end of this," Lavi said under his breath. He leaned back against the wall of the elevator, arms crossed and absently staring up towards their destination. "The teasing'll go on for _years_."

 _"It's not as if there's anything we can do about it,"_ Kanda pointed out. He sounded particularly sour about the prospect, and Lavi caught more than a few dire thoughts about Kanda's planned retribution for said teasing. One particularly vivid mental image made Lavi wince.

"Is that actually physically possible?" he asked, morbidly curious. "I don't think the human spine bends quite that way."

 _"It will when I'm through with them,"_ Kanda replied, and Lavi had to chuckle.

"I could always just pretend to be you for real," he suggested, half serious. "The only person who really _needs_ to know is Komui."

 _"Right. That would last about five minutes - or until you opened your mouth, whichever came first."_

"Hey, just 'cause you couldn't unbend long enough to pull the stick outta your ass doesn't mean I'm not capable of shoving one up mine." Lavi's grin widened at Kanda's immediate outrage and offence - and reluctant amusement, though Lavi doubted Kanda would admit to it even under torture. To his surprise, the more Lavi was able to sense of Kanda's inner thoughts, the more he realized the other man secretly got a kick out of Lavi's more outrageous moments. Possibly only because it let him feel vindicated about his certainty that Lavi was an idiot, but still.

As a result, of course, Lavi was being even more outrageous than usual. He'd far rather make a fool of himself than have to sit around with Kanda brooding darkly in the back of his head.

 _"I doubt you'd even make it as far as your room,"_ Kanda scoffed.

"Oh yeah?" Lavi raised an eyebrow, knowing Kanda would be able to feel the sardonic expression. "Put your money where your mouth is, Yuu. How much you wanna bet?"

He sensed Kanda's cautious interest. _"What exactly are we betting on?"_

"That I can make it from the elevator, through the briefing, through dinner and back to my... no, back to your room without anybody realizing there's something weird going on," Lavi promptly replied. "Komui and anyone he chooses to reveal it to being the exception. Careful what you say, Yuu. I'll hold you to it."

 _"Ten dollars."_

Lavi whistled. That was a not inconsiderable chunk of change. Kanda was obviously utterly certain Lavi wouldn't be able to pull it off. There were a few things the Japanese man really needed to learn about Lavi, and this was a perfect chance to teach him. "You're on."

"What are you two up to over there?" Bookman asked. The old man had learned to tune out the sound of Lavi muttering to himself (themselves?) early on, but the whistle seemed to have drawn his attention.

"Just settling an argument over my acting abilities," Lavi told him with a wink. "Do me a favour and don't gimme away, will you? I got ten dollars riding on this."

He pushed away from the wall, straightening from a careless slouch to the ramrod posture Kanda typically adopted. A subtle shift had his weight properly balanced, poised with most of it on the balls of his feet. It was a swordsman's pose, ready to move in any direction on a moment's notice.

Closing his eyes, Lavi summoned the memory of Kanda as he'd looked the last time Lavi had randomly bumped into him in the halls of headquarters. It wasn't hard to mimic the man's normal facial expression, though Lavi had always found it nothing short of amazing how much nuance Kanda could convey without ever wearing an expression that could be called anything but a scowl.

Bookman snorted, and he looked amused when Lavi opened his eyes. "I suppose it will be good practice for you," he said, using a language they'd already determined Kanda didn't know. "You've been 'Lavi' too long, you're probably getting rusty."

Lavi would have made a face at his master, but that would require breaking character and would only give Bookman more ammunition to tease him with. Instead he intensified his glare a notch, which made Bookman give him a dry smile.

 _"I hate it when you two do that,"_ Kanda muttered. Actually Lavi wasn't sure if he'd meant to say it at all. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between Kanda's 'speech' and the thoughts that Lavi overheard.

It was also becoming a much more frequent occurrence. If Kanda was picking up any of Lavi's thoughts he hadn't said anything about it yet, but it was surely just a matter of time.

"Sorry, but it's not as if we can go off and have a private conversation without having to be rude to you," Lavi murmured. He got a sense of shock and surprise from Kanda, and blinked. "What?"

 _"You... I didn't think you were actually capable of speaking that clearly,"_ Kanda said after a stunned moment.

Lavi couldn't grin, so he snorted instead. "If you think I'm going to make it easy for you to win, you'd better think again," he said gruffly, mimicking Kanda's speech patterns even more precisely. The elevator dinged as it finally reached the top, and he set himself. "Here we go. The bet is on."

 _"This should be entertaining,"_ Kanda said, but Lavi could feel that some of his certainty was wavering. It was an effort to keep the smug grin off his face, but Lavi managed.

They'd picked up a rolling bed from the storehouse below - this was hardly the first time an Exorcist had returned to the Order too injured to walk. It meant that Lavi didn't have to haul his body along over his shoulders, but it drew a fair amount of attention to them. Everyone knew the particular sound of those wheels going over stone and tile, and what it meant. As they walked Order members poked their head out of rooms or gathered near intersections, peering to try to see who had been hurt and how badly. Lavi scowled at all and sundry, which mostly kept them at bay. Kanda's temper when returning from an assignment where he'd been paired with Lavi was all but legendary, and nobody wanted to risk it.

As usual however, rumour flew at the speed of sound and it wasn't long before someone brave enough to risk Kanda's ire came running towards them. "Oh no," a feminine voice exclaimed. "Lavi! What happened? How badly is he hurt? Is he asleep, or unconscious?"

Well, shit. Here was an unanticipated complication, though Lavi really should have expected it. Given the way Lavi felt like everything he received through Kanda's senses had been blurred almost past use, it shouldn't have surprised him that he wouldn't necessarily recognize people when he saw them. "Is that Lenalee?" he whispered as quietly as he could manage. He was _fairly_ certain it was her, but didn't want to call her by name and have it turn out to be Miranda.

 _"What? What kind of stupid question is that?"_ Thankfully Kanda's words contained mental overtones of 'who the hell else would be fluttering over you like that?', which answered Lavi's question for him.

"He's unconscious, essentially in a coma," Bookman told her, folding his hands together inside his sleeves and looking inscrutable. "It's a very long story, and I'd like to get him to the hospital wing and report to your brother as soon as possible."

"Of course," Lenalee said, flustered. "He looks so pale. Will... will he be all right?" Her voice wavered, and she bit her lip to stop it from trembling.

"He's likely dehydrated and malnourished at this point, but a few days in the infirmary will fix that," Bookman said. "Physically he's well enough and should remain so for some time. When or if he'll regain consciousness..." He shrugged.

"I see." Lenalee bowed her head, and Lavi saw her surreptitiously reach out to touch the back of his body's hand. "Is there anything I can do?"

That was Lavi's cue. "You can get out of our way, if you're done fawning over the idiot," he snapped. "We've got a report to make. I'm tired and hungry, and sick of hauling him around."

For the second time he sensed Kanda's shock, and had to fight down a grin. Apparently Kanda hadn't expected him to be capable of being that cold to a 'friend'.

"Kanda!" Lenalee's tone was scolding, but she didn't say anything else. Everyone knew about Kanda's low opinion of people who fell on a mission. "Why don't I take him to the infirmary then, so you can go on up and see my brother?" she suggested to Bookman. "I'll make sure they take care of him."

"That would be helpful," Bookman agreed. "Thank you, Lenalee."

She bowed briefly and took control of the bed, pushing it off towards the large internal elevator. Freed of the burden, Lavi and Bookman turned to head straight to Komui's office instead.

 _"I can't believe you did that,"_ Kanda said. _"I figured you would manage not to flirt with her, even though it seems to be a reflex with you, just because you're trying so hard to be me. But..."_

"It's what you would have done," Lavi pointed out reasonably.

 _"Well, yes, but..."_

"But, anything else would have made her suspicious," Lavi said. "Let's get this report over and done with, I really am starving. At least I'm not a picky eater, since I'm going to be stuck eating your preferred foods."

 _"There's nothing wrong with the food I eat,"_ Kanda said, incensed. And, more importantly, successfully diverted. _"It's what the rest of you eat that makes me wonder why you're not all sick. At least you haven't been stuffing me the way you usually stuff yourself."_

"You don't get as hungry as I do, apparently," Lavi shrugged. "Now hush. If you force me into giving myself away by talking at me then you forfeit the bet."

 _"The hell I do,"_ Kanda grumbled, but subsided.

Komui was understandably incredulous, but it was easy enough to prove they were telling the truth. All Lavi had to do was stop pretending to be Kanda and act like himself for five minutes, and the older man was convinced. He promised to take Kanda off the active list and have the Order's researchers look into the problem, but he didn't hold out much hope.

That didn't surprise Lavi. The Order specialized in anything to do with Innocence or Akuma, and Marda's curse had involved neither. It did disappoint him, but at least it was better than nothing.

Getting through dinner was easy enough. All Lavi had to do was pick a table in the corner and wield his chopsticks with cool efficiency. Kanda wasn't exactly known for making small talk with his tablemates. Assuming he had any, which only happened when headquarters was absolutely packed. Half empty as it was, they ended up with a whole table to themselves.

Lavi had expected that, but he hadn't realized how _bored_ he would get. He was used to having people to talk to. Bookman if no one else, but as requested the old man was doing his best not to break Lavi's cover and so was sitting on the other side of the room. Lavi couldn't even read or write in his logs, because Kanda never did anything at meal times but eat.

It made him acutely aware of just how much the Japanese Exorcist had separated himself from the rest of the world. Of course he'd known that Kanda was an anti-social bastard who kept to himself, but most anti-social people compensated by spending all their time reading or engaged in some other solitary hobby. As far as Lavi knew, Kanda's one and only pastime was killing Akuma.

"Don't you get tired of it?" he asked after he'd turned in his tray and was heading for Kanda's room.

 _"Tired of what?"_

"Being so completely isolated." Lavi shook his head. "It's not natural. Everyone needs _some_ social contact, even if it's one step removed. It's just part of the human psyche. I mean, I've never seen you do _anything_ that would qualify as fun or relaxing. You act like you've got as many needs and emotions as one of Komui's robots. Maybe that Romany was at least partly right."

 _"Hardly. I've got everything I need,"_ Kanda replied. The disdain behind his words was painfully clear to Lavi. _"Other people just slow me down. If I didn't need the resources of the Order, I'd go it alone and be much happier."_

"You might think you would be, but at best you'd end up cutting yourself off completely from your heart so you wouldn't feel the ache. That makes you empty, not happy." Lavi permitted himself a grim smile. "At worst... well. Do you think you're the first person to try? You'd be surprised how many of the secret histories begin with someone doing exactly that, and losing all sense of perspective and compassion."

 _"Just because I don't want or need to hang all over people like you and Lenalee..."_

Lavi couldn't help it; he laughed. He could understand why people would compare him to caring, people-oriented Lenalee in his current persona, but it never failed to amuse him. Kanda had no idea just how well Lavi knew the consequences of the kind of emotional distancing Kanda thought he wanted to subject himself to.

 _"You? What the hell would you know about emotional distance?"_ Kanda scoffed. _"You're one of the most emotion-ridden people I've ever met, and you wear everything right out there on your face."_

Lavi stopped short in the middle of the hallway. "Shit."

 _"What?"_

"I didn't say that out loud," Lavi told him with a sinking feeling in his gut. Kanda's response was a wordless burst of shock and dismay.

"I'm sorry?" a startled voice said from behind them. "Didn't say what out loud?"

Eyes wide, Lavi turned on his heel. There was no mistaking that curse mark, not even with eyes as bad as Kanda's. Allen hovered at the cross-corridor they'd just passed, looking surprised and curious. The surprise intensified when he saw their face, and belatedly Lavi realized he'd been letting his character slip.

Immediately he scowled. "What do you want, bean sprout?"

Allen blinked. "Ah, nothing. I just thought you were talking to me." He tilted his head, regarding them with a concerned expression. "I heard Lavi came back hurt. Are you okay?"

"Of course I am," Lavi snapped. "Unlike certain idiots, I don't let the sight of a pretty woman distract me from doing my _job_. Now if you don't mind, I'm tired." He delivered the last words in the iciest tone of voice he could manage.

"Well... as long as you're sure you're okay," Allen replied. He looked a bit doubtful and puzzled, which made Lavi curse silently.

Without another word Lavi turned and stalked away, letting Kanda's jacket flare out behind them and walking with that particular decisive stomp Kanda had when he was irritated.

 _"You know, you're starting to give me the creeps,"_ Kanda complained once they were out of sight of Allen.

Lavi grimaced, wondering how much of his inner thoughts Kanda was already picking up. At this rate Kanda was going to end up privy to at least some of the secrets of the Bookmen, because Lavi didn't think he'd be able to hide the truth for long if Kanda could see past his surface persona.

He waited to reply until they were safely behind Kanda's closed door, not wanting a repeat of the incident with Allen. "Creepy? Me? I dunno what you're talking about," he said in a forced light tone, dropping all pretence of maintaining Kanda's personality.

 _"You're too damned good at being **me** ,"_ Kanda said.

Lavi breathed a quiet sigh of relief that it wasn't anything more serious. "Geez, Yuu. I've worked with you for two and a half years," he laughed. "If I hadn't observed enough of how you act to mimic you by now, I'd be a pretty damned lousy record-keeper."

 _"It's still creepy as hell,"_ Kanda insisted, clearly uncomfortable. _"It's like you know how I'd act better than I do."_

"I prob'ly do," Lavi told him, shrugging. "I'm seeing it from an outside perspective, after all, whereas your perception of yourself is messed up by the way you _want_ to believe you act."

Curious, he moved forward and peered around the room. He'd never had the opportunity to see Kanda's personal quarters before, and he wanted to see what it would reveal about the other man.

Not much, apparently. The single bed was neatly made, and all of Kanda's spare clothes were presumably put away in the drawers of the small dresser. There was almost no indication that it was actually an occupied room - the furniture and blanket were standard issue from the Order, there were no carpets or drapes or hangings, no indication of hobbies or interests outside of being an Exorcist. The single sign that the room was lived in at all was a peculiar decoration that seemed to consist of a lotus flower suspended in water at the top of an hourglass. Two petals rested at the bottom, so it was clearly a real flower. Lavi wondered where on earth Kanda was finding lotus blossoms to replace it with every time it withered.

"Huh. Makes my room look like a disaster area," Lavi murmured, moving closer to get a better look at the flower.

 _"Why does it not surprise me that you're a slob?"_ Kanda sneered.

"Hey, I'm not a slob. I know exactly where everything in my room is at all times - unless someone gets overzealous and 'cleans it up' for me when I'm away," Lavi countered. "It's just not as tidy as yours, because I'm not nearly as anal as you. What is this, anyway? Bizarre kind of vase..."

He reached out to pick up the hourglass, wanting to see if there was a trick to opening it to change the flower or what. A wave of panic and anger from Kanda swamped him, so strong it actually sent him to his knees. _"Don't touch that,"_ Kanda ordered him, and the terror behind his words was strong enough that Lavi could taste it.

Gritting his teeth, Lavi fought against the foreign emotions and struggled to regain his own stability. "Yeah, all right, I get it already," he grunted. "I won't touch it, just ease up Yuu. I can hardly breathe."

Slowly the emotions receded, leaving behind only a cold anger. _"Can't you go without poking into things for five minutes?"_ Kanda demanded.

"Nope," Lavi told him cheerfully, hauling himself back to his feet. "It's my training, I have to get to the bottom of everything. Look, I _am_ sorry, I didn't know it was important. What's the big deal, anyway? What is it?"

 _"It's none of your damned business, that's what it is."_ Kanda's anger was clear enough that Lavi would have willingly backed down and found something else to talk about. Unfortunately for both of them the question triggered a flood of images, thoughts and emotions from Kanda, so strong Lavi couldn't have ignored it if he'd tried.

Hanging onto the edge of the dresser to keep from hitting his knees for a second time, Lavi desperately sorted through the influx and did his best to put it into some semblance of order before it overwhelmed him. It was sort of like listening to twenty phone conversations at once, which he was certainly capable of doing. Except none of the words were in the right order, he only caught about every third word anyway, and he had no idea what the conversations were _about_.

 _"Get the hell out of my head!"_ Kanda demanded, outraged.

"I'm _trying_ , Yuu. I'm not peeking on purpose here." Deliberately Lavi focused on the most boring bit of history he could think of, and that seemed to finally break the increased connection between them. The images and emotions weren't bombarding him any more, but like everything Lavi ever heard or saw the information had been burned into his memory. He couldn't just forget them, and his natural curiosity meant he couldn't help but poke at the mystery they presented.

He lifted a hand and touched their chest, just over the heart. Lavi had been a bit surprised to find the tattoo there the first time he'd undressed - Kanda hadn't struck him as the type, and even if he had been Lavi would have expected kanji, not Sanskrit.

Now he knew it was connected both to Kanda's inhuman ability to heal damage and to the lotus that apparently wilted far slower than any flower had a right to. He just didn't know _how_ they were connected, and wondering was going to drive him crazy.

 _"Oh, for... if I tell you what the link is, will you stop **thinking** about it? You're going to drive **me** crazy."_

"It'd help, but I can't make any promises. Sort of like trying very hard not to think of the camel's left knee." Lavi gave a wry grin. "Anyway, hate to tell you, but if it's not this it'll be something else. Access to my inner thoughts isn't going to be any kind of privilege or adventure. I spend a lot of time analyzing small details and poking at things nobody else would care about. It's part of being a Bookman."

 _"They're symbols,"_ Kanda said grudgingly. _"The tattoo denotes a promise made, and the lotus tells me how much time I have left to keep it. I'm searching for someone, and I don't have time to be worrying about wounds and injuries. As long as the lotus lives, so do I."_

Lavi whistled. "Bargains like that are never as good as they seem at first glance. What's the catch?"

 _"I'm only alive as long as the lotus is."_

Looking at the two petals lying at the bottom of the hourglass, Lavi nodded slowly. "Guess it can't heal this, huh?"

 _"I wish. My life's not in danger and there's nothing wrong with my body, so I suppose it doesn't realize there's anything that needs to be healed."_

"Well, if you don't want me to find out every last detail, we'd better talk about something else because you're practically yelling in my ear every time you think about it." Lavi frowned. "Huh. Maybe the connection gets stronger the more powerful the emotion associated with the thought is. That's the clearest thing I've gotten from you yet."

 _"That's bullshit, or I'd have been reading your mind from day one,"_ Kanda retorted. _"Which reminds me, you owe me ten dollars."_

"Huh?" Startled, Lavi stared at the lotus since he couldn't look at Kanda. "How do you figure that? Nobody guessed that it wasn't you driving the train."

 _"Those weren't the terms. You said 'without anybody realizing that something weird is going on'. Allen definitely suspects something is up, he just doesn't know what."_

Kanda sounded smug - and well he should, Lavi realized when he hastily reviewed their earlier conversation. Kanda was right. "Damn it. And I suppose since the clause about you not harassing me into giving myself away wasn't in the original bet, you're gonna hold me to the first terms."

 _"Damn right."_ The smugness level increased a notch, and Lavi imagined he could almost see the insufferable smile on the bastard's face.

"All right, fine, I owe you ten bucks," Lavi capitulated, throwing himself down on the bed. He made a face when he felt how hard it was, but he'd slept on worse. "Now what? I dunno about you, but I'm not sleepy yet. We can't go back out there unless we want the whole damned Order wondering if you're coming down with something. What do you _do_ with all your time in here, anyway?"

 _"Meditate, usually."_

"Uh, no." Lavi's tone came out as a mixture of amusement and sheepishness. "That's _so_ not gonna happen. The old panda keeps trying to teach me, but... well, even if I was better at it, I dunno if I could manage it with you in the back of my head."

 _"True. Then I don't know. I read sometimes, but we'd have to get a book from the library. Besides, I doubt our taste in reading material is anything alike."_ Lavi got a distinct and very disdainful impression of dirty novels from Kanda.

"Are you kidding me?" Lavi laughed. "Yuu, I'll read _anything_. I could quote you the Order's library from memory, if you want. Only reason you don't ever see me doing it is because when I'm around other people I'm too busy observing to read."

He'd caught Kanda by surprise yet again. _"From memory? The whole library? You can't possibly have read it all, let alone remember it."_

"Speed reader," Lavi informed him. "Combined with an eidetic memory thanks to my training as a Bookman. I mean, there's a few books tucked away on the back shelves that I haven't gotten to yet, but not many. I'm saving them for when I'm really bored, so I don't run out completely."

 _"Well... the only other thing I really do is clean my sword. So I guess it's that or you reciting a book,"_ Kanda said, sounding dazed.

"I'd rather not, at least not without something to drink," Lavi said. "Sword it is, then. Where do you keep your stuff?"

He didn't need Kanda to actually answer the question - just asking it triggered another wave of information. It certainly was a faster way of transferring information, but Lavi couldn't quite bring himself to appreciate the better points. He stood and pulled open the top left drawer of the dresser, revealing the polish and cloths. Mugen didn't require sharpening, of course, but there was a whetstone as well. Lavi grabbed the cloths, then his eyebrows rose when he saw what had been hidden beneath them. "Hey, you have a Go board?"

 _"It's Komui's, actually. I'm the only other person in this branch of the Order who plays. It gets lost if he puts it with his things, so I hang onto it. So?"_

"So? So, let's _play_ ," Lavi said like he was speaking to a slow child. So Kanda _did_ have at least some form of human contact beyond his work, that was good to know. He picked up the polished wooden board and the two jars of stones beneath it, carrying them back to the bed.

This time 'surprise' wasn't a strong enough word to describe what he felt from Kanda. _"You... play Go."_

It was a statement, but it felt like a question. Lavi rolled his eyes. "Of course I play Go. It's one of the first things Bookman taught me. What did _you_ think we do to entertain ourselves when we're alone and bored in the middle of nowhere? 'Cause I gotta tell you, that happens a _lot_ in our line of work."

Kanda's attempts to picture alternate activities they might have used to fill the time came through loud and clear to Lavi, and he laughed. "See? Not much else, is there. Bookman's not exactly the card-shark type. I know most of the world's major strategy games, but Go is the favourite for both of us. I should tell the old panda that Komui plays; he might like to have an opponent other than me. You want white or black?"

 _"How are we going to play, exactly? I can't place the stones."_ Kanda still sounded like he was in shock, but at least he was considering the idea.

"Easy enough. You tell me where you want to go and I'll place your stone. I promise not to peek." Since Kanda didn't seem to be about to make a decision, Lavi shrugged and picked up a black stone, placing it near one of the stars.

 _"I'll be at a disadvantage, playing backwards,"_ Kanda pointed out, but Lavi could feel that he was ready to capitulate. In all honesty, what else _could_ they do?

"Nah, we'll play from your perspective," Lavi assured him.

 _"Then you'll be at a disadvantage."_

Lavi laughed. "Yuu, the old panda hasn't let me _look_ at a board since I was ten. I could play in the dark. Playing upside down isn't gonna bother me."

He could feel Kanda struggling to process that. _"You... play **blind** Go. Since you were **ten**?"_

This time Lavi couldn't really blame him for being surprised. It was a rare person whose memory was good enough to hold the locations of every stone in an intricate Go game, and forgetting the position of even one would spell disaster. "Sure. It's part of my training to improve my memory. I can quote the better part of the library, and you're surprised I can keep track of a Go game in my head?"

 _"How good are you?"_ Kanda wanted to know.

"Dunno, actually." Lavi shrugged. "The old panda still beats me about three out of five, but I have no idea how good _he_ is. Never played anybody but him." He picked up a white stone and flipped it between his fingers. "Shall we find out?"

 _"...You're not half as stupid as you pretend to be, are you?"_

This time Lavi's snort was filled with irony as well as amusement. "I was wondering how long it was gonna take you to figure that out. Two weeks in my head, and you _just now_ realized it's an act? I know you don't have my training and all, Yuu, but that's pretty damn unobservant."

 _"I..."_ Kanda seemed to be at a loss for words. Lavi could feel his inner turmoil as he fought to realign a world that had been turned on its head. Kanda's certainty that Lavi was an idiot had been the cornerstone of the Japanese man's dealings with him for two and a half years.

Lavi didn't bother to try to hide his contempt for Kanda's wilful obliviousness. That only irritated Kanda further, of course. Now Kanda was the one who felt like an idiot, and he clearly didn't like it much. "Like I said, Yuu. Maybe Marda was right about one thing. You gotta start paying more attention to the people around you, and not just clinging to your initial snap judgement. Especially since your default assumption seems to be that everyone is useless compared to you."

He felt Kanda turn that over in his head, poking at the idea like one might prod an unknown pile of something that had been left on their bed unexpectedly. Cautiously, and expecting a nasty result from the exploration.

 _"Why do you do it?"_ Kanda finally asked, subdued. _"I'm not the only one who thinks you're a moron, I'm just the most vocally disdainful about it."_

"Partly to make people underestimate me like you just did," Lavi freely admitted. "Partly it's training in understanding human behaviour, and how people react to different personality types. Mostly it's just entertaining." He grinned. "The world gets pretty boring sometimes, and someone making a fool of themselves always livens things up. I don't mind if it's me."

 _"So the idiotic comments, the hyperactivity, the overblown flirting..."_

"All part of the act. C'mon, do you really still think I'm so stupid I haven't learned from my mistakes with women _yet_?" This was starting to get too close to things Lavi was hoping Kanda wouldn't realize. It wasn't that big a step from discovering that part of Lavi's personality was an act to wondering if _anything_ was genuine. "So are you gonna play, or what? Too afraid I'll trounce you?"

As he'd hoped, the sting to Kanda's pride spurred the other man to focus on the game instead of on Lavi. _"Who's going to trounce whom? Four-four."_

Placing the stone, Lavi tried not to let his unease communicate itself to Kanda. He hoped Komui or Bookman would come up with a solution for this soon. The longer Kanda was able to read Lavi's thoughts, the less happy either of them was going to be.


	6. Chapter 6

_"What are you doing? I thought we were going to breakfast."_

"I wanna check on my body," Lavi told Kanda. "Didn't get a chance last night, but I figured not too many people will be up and about this early. So there won't be anyone wondering why you're showing an unusual amount of concern for a fallen comrade. I wanna see for myself that I'm not gonna die any time soon."

 _"I suppose that's understandable,"_ Kanda said. He sounded less grudging than Lavi would have expected.

 _"If I was the one in the 'coma' I'd certainly want to check on my body, so why would I begrudge you the same?"_ Kanda demanded, irritated.

Lavi sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We've really gotta find a way to stop reading each other's thoughts. It's _creepy_ when you respond to something I didn't say."

 _"Stop thinking so damned loud, then."_

"Right back at'cha, Yuu. Hey... why's the door open?" Lavi frowned when he peered down the medical wing and spotted the door with his name scrawled on the chalkboard nailed to it. It was slightly ajar and the lights were on, but he couldn't see inside from this far away. "The doctors wouldn't be up yet unless it's an emergency, and the nurse is at her station over there."

 _"It's not like anyone in the Order would try to hurt you while you're vulnerable,"_ Kanda pointed out, scathing. _"I never realized how paranoid you are until I got stuck in here with you. Maybe Bookman wanted to check on you, too."_

"Yeah, probably," Lavi agreed, relaxing. "I've spent most of my life on one battleground or another, Yuu. Being paranoid is what's kept me alive this long."

When he opened the door, however, it wasn't his master he found in the visitor's chair. Lenalee had clearly fallen asleep where she sat, one arm on the bed beside Lavi's body with her head pillowed on it, and her other hand loosely clasping his body's fingers.

Thoroughly nonplussed, Lavi stood in the doorway and stared. Had she been there all night? Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen her at dinner the night before, either. Surely she hadn't just _stayed_ here after delivering his body to the doctors. Had she?

 _"Why are you so surprised?"_ Kanda asked. _"That's the kind of person Lenalee is."_

"I just... I'd have expected her to do something like this for Allen, maybe, or her brother, but not for me. Visit me, sure, but stay all night and fall asleep on my bed? Holding my hand?" Lavi did his best to keep his voice down, but Lenalee stirred on the bed. He briefly considered just ducking back out the door before she saw him, but she yawned and sat up before he could make up his mind.

"What... did I fall asleep?" she exclaimed, looking around and spotting them in the doorway. "Oh! Kanda, you startled me. What are you doing here?" She cocked her head at them, curious and surprised.

Thankfully thinking fast on his feet was something Lavi had a lot of practice in. "I was passing by and saw the door was open," he said gruffly, careful to imitate Kanda's speech. There was no point in borrowing trouble by revealing that he was Lavi - she'd only be hurt by the way he'd treated her the day before. "I could ask you the same thing."

"The doctors told me that sometimes people in a coma are still aware of what's happening around them," Lenalee explained, clearly embarrassed. "I figured a quiet, empty room wouldn't provide much incentive for him to want to wake up, so..." She shrugged and gestured, and for the first time Lavi noticed the book she'd been lying on.

"You spent the whole night reading out loud?" Lavi said, surprised again.

She nodded. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. I wanted to keep him company, at least until the doctors were around, so he knows he's got someone waiting for him." She ducked her head. "I suppose you think it's silly."

 _"I certainly do,"_ Kanda said, and Lavi could hear the mental eye-roll that accompanied the words. _"What a waste of time. Now she'll be tired if she's needed elsewhere, and it's not like you could even hear her."_

Lavi agreed, and had intended to say as much. But something about the sorrowful concern and genuine caring in Lenalee's eyes touched him in a way he hadn't expected. She was a good friend; far better than he deserved, really.

"Actually, I'm kinda flattered." He hadn't meant to say the words, hadn't even realized he was thinking them, but once he'd said them there was no taking them back.

"Huh? You are?" Understandably confused, Lenalee blinked at them.

 _"What are you doing, idiot?"_ Kanda hissed at the same moment.

"Bet's not on anymore, Yuu," Lavi reminded his passenger with a wry grin. So much for keeping her in the dark, but there was nothing for it now. "The whole damned Order still doesn't need to know, but Lenalee can keep her mouth shut. 'Sides, people are gonna realize something's up when Komui never sends us out, anyway."

He got a sense of grudging agreement from Kanda, and Lenalee looked even more bewildered. "I don't understand," she said. "Are you all right, Kanda?"

"I'm not Yuu," Lavi told her. "And I'm sorry you wasted your whole night, but I definitely couldn't hear you from Yuu's room. I'm... really touched you cared enough to do it, though."

"L-lavi?" Incredulous, she stared at them, and he nodded. "What? How?"

"A Gypsy curse, if you can believe it," he said, settling on the edge of the bed. It was still bizarre to see himself lying there like some kind of oversized doll, but she was occupying the only chair in the room. "Sorry 'bout what I said yesterday, but we figured the fewer people who knew about it, the easier it would be to handle."

"We? You... you were talking to Kanda a moment ago, weren't you?" She looked stunned, and he couldn't blame her.

"Yeah, he's still in here, he just can't _do_ anything." He lifted his hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. "I'd tell you that he says 'hi', but, y'know. He's Yuu. You'd know I was lying."

She giggled and shook her head, her eyes wide. "It seems so wrong to see Kanda joking and smiling like that."

"Trust me, feels pretty weird from in here, too," Lavi said. "Listen, you've gotta be exhausted. Go grab some breakfast, see Bookman and get some real sleep."

"See Bookman? What for?" she asked.

He gave her a sympathetic smile. "For the crick in your neck I know you've gotta have. Now go on, get outta here before I forget myself and start flirting, and poor Yuu is the one who gets slapped."

She laughed again and stood, and touched their arm as she passed on the way out. Lavi smiled after her until she was out of sight, then let out an explosive sigh and dropped his head into his hands. "Y'know what? You were right in the first place. I'm a damned idiot."

 _"What are you talking about?"_

Wordlessly Lavi shook his head, too focused internally to explain and not really wanting to anyway. What Lenalee had done really, honestly had touched him. Living his life as he had, drifting from one battle to the next without ever staying more than a few months in one place, always on the sidelines and in the shadows... it didn't really lend itself to making close friends. Not the kind who would sit by your bed and read to you on the off chance that you _might_ be able to hear them... just in case you were lonely...

Taking another deep breath, Lavi slowly forced his rebelling heart back under control. 'Lonely' meant nothing to a Bookman. 'Friend' meant nothing to a Bookman. What other people did or didn't do with their own hearts was nothing to someone who had cast his own aside. So it had ever been, and so it ever would be.

Even if it was getting harder and harder for Lavi to convince himself every time one of his 'friends' caught him off guard and managed to slip under his skin. It was starting to happen with distressing frequency.

When he finally had himself back in control, Lavi let his breath out and opened his eyes. Immediately he was assaulted by Kanda's irate voice. _"...hell are you **doing**? Lavi? Lavi!"_

"So much for hoping we'd get out of this before you found out the truth," Lavi said dryly, straightening.

 _"Oh, are you finally listening to me again?"_ Kanda sounded particularly scathing, but Lavi could sense his very real terror and concern. The terror Lavi could understand. When your only means of interacting with the world suddenly stops responding, it had to be frightening. But the concern surprised him.

It triggered another small ache in his chest, but Lavi had already won the main battle and had no trouble subduing the wayward emotion this time. "Aw, don't tell me you were worried about me?" he asked, his voice light and empty. "Sorry, didn't mean to cut you off like that. I just needed to focus for a minute."

For long seconds Kanda said nothing, but Lavi could feel the thoughts and emotions racing through the other man's mind. Lavi waited patiently to see what the reaction would be, because there really wasn't anything else he _could_ do. Given that Kanda could basically read his mind, the other man would see right through any attempt Lavi made to dissemble.

 _"It's **all** an act?"_ Kanda finally asked.

"Define 'all'," Lavi countered, kicking their feet idly and staring down at his own peacefully sleeping face. "But yeah, most of it."

 _"I've been trying to figure out all this time why that witch would say you need to stop fighting your heart. It just didn't make any sense. But you... what you were thinking, those things about the Bookmen..."_ Kanda once again was completely surprised by a revelation about Lavi, but this time it wasn't any kind of good surprise.

"Yup. And now you know why Bookman's so unhappy about this whole mess." Lavi shrugged, keeping his voice carefully neutral. It didn't matter to him how Kanda reacted, it _didn't_ , except inasmuch as he didn't want the other man blowing his cover to everyone else. "He'd already been coming down on me pretty hard these last few months. I... it's hard not to start caring about people you're out there risking your life with. You should know that better than anyone."

Kanda's immediate reaction was sharp denial, but it was followed a moment later by grudging acknowledgement. _"I don't have the time or energy to care about other people,"_ he grumbled.

"Because you're afraid that if you do, you'll have to care about everyone as much as you do the person you're looking for." Lavi nodded. "It doesn't really work that way, though."

 _"Says the man who just beat his own emotions into submission over a perfectly natural reaction to someone going out of their way to help him."_

"Hey, I didn't say I was any more logical about it than you are," Lavi pointed out. "Though I do have more reason. That's part of being a Bookman, a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. It's just... harder some days than others, I'm finding."

 _"And yet you say I need to stop doing exactly the same thing you are. Isn't that a bit hypocritical?"_ Kanda sneered.

"On the contrary, Yuu. It's good advice from someone who's been there and knows the consequences." Lavi sighed. His words weren't getting through to Kanda at all. He could still feel the other man's insistence on clinging to his belief that he would be happier if he didn't have to interact with other people at all.

Well, if words wouldn't get his point across, maybe a visceral demonstration would. Without warning Lavi dropped all his carefully constructed masks and pretences, the lies and half-truths that made up his current alias. He stopped trying to hide and embraced the yawning abyss that lay under the surface of his persona. Linked as they were, Kanda couldn't help but be aware of it, too.

There was no pain or sorrow, no grief or anger. But there was also no joy or love, no happiness or excitement. There was just nothing, nothing at all - an empty hollow where a person should have been.

"There, you see?" Lavi said softly, feeling Kanda's instinctive reaction of horror and revulsion. "Y'don't want this, Yuu, not really. Y'just don't want to risk being hurt any more. There's a difference." He shrugged. "Not feeling doesn't make you happy. It doesn't make you anything at all."

 _"Liar."_

At first Lavi thought Kanda meant he was lying about the consequences of cutting himself off from emotion. Before he could so much as open his mouth to object, Kanda suddenly speared deeper into his mind, a deliberate increase in their connection. That was something they'd both avoided doing for obvious reasons, so Lavi was utterly unprepared for it and totally unable to block it.

Kanda pierced right through the thick shield of indifference that Lavi had so painstakingly built around his heart, driving into the emotions buried beneath. Like a bottle under pressure, it didn't take much to make the whole thing explode. Lavi was flooded by a wave of loneliness and pain so sharp it made him choke. Every time he'd observed evidence of real love and affection and felt envy; every regret he'd ever had when he turned away from a genuine offer of friendship; every tear he'd never shed at moving on to the next record and leaving behind everything and everyone he knew - it all came crashing down on him at once.

 _"Still trying to claim you don't feel anything?"_ Kanda asked.

"St-stop that," Lavi gasped, clutching at his aching chest and bending double in an instinctive attempt to protect himself from the unbearable pain. "Yuu, stop it. Stop it!" He barely managed to keep the last words from turning into a scream, which would surely have brought the doctors running.

Lavi had spent his whole life learning to ignore and repress his emotions, to shove them away until he could pretend they weren't there anymore. He had no defences against this sort of onslaught, and he felt like the weight of it would crush him. He scrambled for an anchor or a lifeline, something, _anything_ that would help him ride it out, and found nothing. All he could do was try to flail his way through it like a man gone overboard who didn't know how to swim, and hope he came through relatively in one piece on the other side.

"Stop, please," he whimpered, more than willing to beg if it would get Kanda to release him before he went mad.

 _"I'm not doing anything any more,"_ Kanda said, but he sounded subdued now. _"I... I was just trying to prove a point, I didn't mean... I didn't know..."_

Lavi gave a hollow laugh that came out as more of a moan. "Still think this is what you want?" he taunted, trying to focus on Kanda to distract himself from the press of his emotions. There was the lifeline he'd needed, the rock to brace against to haul himself out. "I never said I had no emotions. Any more than you would if you succeeded at what you're trying to do. They never go away, you just get to the point where you can ignore them. Mostly."

Slowly, painfully, he brought himself back under control. The effort left him feeling as weak and shaken as if he'd just gone face-to-face with an army of Akuma, even though the battle had been entirely in his own mind. Even then, his heart ached with the aftermath, enough to make him physically uncomfortable. "Bookmen don't need a heart," he whispered, more to remind himself than to snipe at Kanda.

 _"Maybe not, but you've got one anyway."_

"So I do," Lavi said. His voice was more of a rasp, and he was trembling almost hard enough to make their teeth chatter. "Thanks so very much for pointing it out to me. You probably just set me back a couple of years in my training, and made it that much more painful for me until I manage to recover."

 _"I..."_ Kanda wasn't the type to offer apologies, but Lavi felt his genuine remorse. Oddly, that made Lavi feel even worse.

"Don't." He shook their head. "Just don't, Yuu. I don't want to talk about it, or think about it. It's fine, just drop it."

Carefully he stood, not quite trusting their knees not to give out. They were steadier on their feet than he'd expected, and he even managed to walk to the door in a reasonable approximation of Kanda's stalk.

His passenger was quiet for the moment, absorbing everything that had just happened. Lavi could hear a distressing amount of his thought process. "You do realize what you've done, don't you?" Lavi asked wearily.

 _"That I've connected us even more? Yes,"_ Kanda acknowledged with a sigh. _"It... seemed like a good idea at the time. You're better than anyone else at getting me to lose my cool and react without thinking."_

"That's because I'm good at pushing people's buttons," Lavi replied with a weak attempt at a smile. "It's one of my specialties. I'll be even better at it when we get out of this, you know. Now I _really_ understand what your hot spots are."

Kanda didn't bother to dignify that with a response. He didn't have to, since Lavi picked up his irritation, dismay, and abhorrence loud and clear. The Japanese man was still thinking hard about what he'd seen of Lavi's true self. As Lavi had intended, the display had shocked him and made him re-evaluate what he really wanted, so at least the whole thing hadn't been a complete waste.

 _"Even if I wanted to open up to people, I couldn't,"_ Kanda finally muttered. _"Everyone knows I'm an anti-social bastard. If I tried to be friendly, they'd probably assume I was an Akuma doing a poor attempt at disguising itself as me."_

Lavi snorted in amusement, because he had to admit that was true. At least, it would be as Kanda was picturing it - with Kanda just walking up and awkwardly announcing that he wanted to be friends after all. He'd have four kinds of Innocence aimed at him in three seconds flat. " 'Subtle' just isn't a word you're very familiar with, is it?" Lavi asked the other man. "There are better ways to kill a mosquito than pounding it with my hammer. Honestly."

 _"Hmph. Easy for you to say. Maybe you can walk into a room and make friends as easily as breathing, but it doesn't come naturally to me,"_ Kanda protested. _"It's different when you're starting from a point where everyone already hates you."_

"You think so?" Lavi paused outside the doors to the dining hall, head tilted. He was as recovered as he was going to get for the moment, and he needed something to take his mind off it. "Double or nothing?"

 _"What?"_

"Double or nothing," Lavi repeated patiently. "Our earlier bet. Give me half an hour and I'll have at least five people - or everyone in the room, whichever is lower - treating you like a normal human being instead of a lit stick of dynamite. Without revealing that it's really me in here, though I take no responsibility for anyone who figures it out for themselves."

Once again he'd caught Kanda's interest, however reluctantly. _"In such a way that I'd be able and willing to repeat it later?"_

"It wouldn't be very useful to you otherwise, would it?" Lavi retorted. "Well? Hurry up, I think I hear someone coming and I don't want to be caught standing out here talking to myself."

 _"All right, you're on."_

Lavi nodded, and assumed Kanda's persona once more. It was much easier this time, no effort at all, like he'd flipped a switch and was thinking with Kanda's brain instead of his own. The thought terrified him, but he shoved that aside and strode forward into the dining hall. If he let himself brood over it he'd drive himself crazy, and anyway he had a bet to win.

He could feel Kanda's intense curiosity about what he was going to do, but Lavi did his best to keep his thoughts buried. He ordered breakfast from Jeryy without changing anything from Kanda's usual routine, took their tray, and turned to survey the room.

It was early enough that there were only a few small groups scattered throughout the large room, and plenty of empty space. He spotted Lenalee on her way out, and nodded back when she waved at him. The only other black uniform in the room was Allen, seated over to one side along with Reever, Johnny, and a few of the other researchers.

Perfect.

Lavi made his way over to the table everyone was clustered around and sat down at the other end of it. That put them only two seats down from the next person on their side, and one seat down from Allen across from them. There was an abrupt lull in the conversation as everyone scrambled to figure out why Kanda had sat so close when there were more than enough free tables. They all watched him surreptitiously, uncertain whether he was about to chew them out or what.

 _"You see? It's useless,"_ Kanda said. He did a good job of sounding irritated, but Lavi caught the flash of real hurt buried beneath the ire. Even though he'd done it to himself, it still bothered the swordsman on some level to see the way everyone treated him like a pariah.

"Patience," Lavi murmured, too soft for the others to hear him. He focused on their food, seeming to ignore the rest of the table completely, and slowly they started to talk again.

"So has anyone heard how he's doing?" Johnny asked, still flicking nervous glances at them every few seconds, as if expecting the swordsman to jump up and attack him for speaking in his presence.

"Still unconscious, and they don't know when or if he'll wake up," Reever replied with unusual seriousness. With a small jolt, Lavi realized they were talking about _him_. "Bookman seems really worried, though. That can't be a good sign."

"I hope he gets better soon," Johnny said, drooping. "It's just not the same when he's not around. He keeps everyone so cheerful. I was really looking forward to him getting back from that mission." There were general murmurs of agreement from around the table, full of remorse and grief.

Once again Lavi had to battle a wave of emotion caused by the unexpectedly genuine caring of his comrades. He'd known he was well liked; the outgoing and funny personalities usually were. But he hadn't realized that it went beyond simple popularity into real friendship for so many people.

"It's worse that he's here and unconscious," someone else said. "You know? If he's just away you can tell yourself he'll be back soon, but..." He trailed off, and the general mood of the table plummeted as everyone nodded.

 _"Ironic, isn't it?"_ Kanda said sourly. _"They all love you, but you don't really want it. Yet I couldn't make them like me if I tried."_

"The bet isn't over yet," Lavi whispered. Raising his voice but still not looking at the others, he declared, "He'll be fine. The idiot is too thick-skulled to let a knock to the head keep him down for long."

There was a startled silence from the others, as everyone tried to process the fact that he'd spoken to them and figure out how to respond. Lavi continued to focus on eating, not so much as glancing over to see what their reaction was.

"Kanda's right," Allen said after a long moment of awkward silence. "We have to believe Lavi will be okay. He wouldn't want us to sit around brooding over him." Everyone nodded again, and a few people offered the young Exorcist tentative smiles.

"Any bets on how long it'll take Komui to process the paperwork for an Exorcist injured in the line of duty?" Reever said, his voice dry.

"Or more importantly, how long he'll use the fact that he's working on it as an excuse to stall us on getting him to deal with everything _else_?" someone else put in, and there was a soft round of laughter.

"Five dollars says he takes at least a week to sign off on it," Lavi said, and he succeeded in being casual enough that someone actually answered him.

"I'll take that bet... uh... Kanda?" Johnny trailed off in surprise as he realized who had spoken.

"What?" Lavi finally looked over at them, one brow arched in a condescending expression. "I'm not permitted to have an opinion on Komui's inattention to his work?"

"Uh..." Johnny hesitated, trading uncertain glances with first Reever and then the rest of the researchers.

 _"Will you stop it?"_ Kanda demanded, mortified. _"You're making an idiot of both of us, and they're not buying it. Just get up and walk away before you make it any worse."_

Lavi couldn't smile, but he could _think_ about smiling, and at this point that was enough for Kanda to pick it up. He felt the other man's despair in reply, and shook his head minutely. Kanda really needed to learn that Lavi didn't make bets he wasn't sure he could win. "Are you going to take the bet, or not?" he asked Johnny.

"No, I'll take it," Johnny nodded, looking a bit bewildered. "He's not _that_ bad, not on something that affects one of his people directly. I don't think it'll take him more than four days. Anyone else?"

A few others put their bets in, while Lavi resisted the urge to look smug. Komui had agreed to delay the paperwork on the whole mess until they figured out exactly what was going on and hopefully how to fix it, so that it wouldn't make its way through the grapevine. It was sort of cheating, but with all the overtime Komui's crew was forced to put in they could certainly afford to lose the bet.

And if they got lucky and found a way to get Lavi back into his own body before then, causing Komui to finish the paperwork and Lavi to lose the bet... well, five dollars would be a small price to pay, he thought. Kanda apparently agreed, strongly enough that Lavi was nearly overwhelmed by it.

"Have you heard about any upcoming missions?" Lavi asked Allen, and was rather proud of himself for managing to convey boredom, irritation, and grudging hope all at once in his tone of voice.

"Nothing specific, but I think Komui is planning to send me out looking for my master again," Allen replied thoughtfully. "But he'll probably send Lenalee with me instead of you. He seems to like pairing us up, for some reason. I suppose we complement each other to a certain degree."

"He's matchmaking, more like it," Lavi snorted. "Even an idiot could see that." He paused and pretended to reconsider. "On second thought Lavi seems to be oblivious as well, given the way he's always chasing Lenalee, so I guess an idiot can't see it."

That provoked another round of laughter, as Allen turned bright red and sputtered denials and the researchers started teasing him. Satisfied, Lavi sat back in their seat and returned his attention to their food, permitting himself to show the faintest of smiles.

Over the rest of the meal Lavi mostly just listened, though he put in a few pithy and insightful comments here and there. Nothing that Kanda wouldn't have come up with, but he softened the usual biting sarcasm of the man's tone a bit and ended up making the others laugh instead of cringe. By the time he stood to leave, they'd stopped trading startled glances among themselves every time he spoke. Allen even called "Have a good day," after them, which Lavi only grunted in response to but which made him smile internally.

"Looks like I won this time," he declared softly as they headed down the hall.

 _"How did you do that?"_ Kanda asked, and Lavi could feel his confusion and bewilderment. _"I watched you do it, and I still don't understand. They were acting like talking to me was completely normal."_

"You just have to have the patience and fortitude to ride out the initial bad reactions," Lavi explained. "And more importantly, _you_ have to act like talking to them is completely normal. If you behave as if nothing is weird or unusual, so will other people, for the most part. I've done the hardest part for you, even, so if you keep it up you'll find it won't be all that bad. Just don't be surprised if there are rumours flying around that you're acting weird, for a while. It will take some time for people to get used to the idea that your bark is worse than your bite."

 _"Not that I'll have a chance to find out for myself any time soon,"_ Kanda said bitterly. _"I can't interact with them at all."_

"Yeah, well." Lavi grimaced. "So then by the time you get to try it, I'll really have done the hard part for you and they'll all be starting to accept you."

 _"And what about you?"_ Kanda wanted to know. _"I can feel how badly you're still hurting even now, you know. Why don't you just..."_

" _No._ " The denial came out more forcefully than Lavi had meant it to, and a passing Finder gave them a strange look. He glared at the man, who blanched and hurried on his way, probably afraid Kanda would gut him.

When he was sure the man was gone, Lavi continued more softly. "I'm a Bookman, and this is how I have to be."

 _"Part of you wishes you weren't,"_ Kanda said bluntly. Lavi winced, because it was true. There was a part of him, a _small_ part but a part nonetheless, that wished he could accept the offers of real friendship that were continuously being extended to him.

"Maybe. Everybody has regrets of one kind or another," Lavi acknowledged painfully. "But that doesn't change what has to be. I am what I am, Yuu, and that's the end of it." No matter how much it hurt, deep in the heart that Kanda had forced him to stop ignoring.


	7. Chapter 7

Staring down at the pattern of black and white stones on the polished wooden board, Lavi frowned. This was by far and away the _strangest_ Go game he'd ever seen. The pattern wandered all over the board with no logic behind it at all. Kanda wasn't nearly as good a player as Bookman, but this game looked like it had been played by someone with no idea what the rules even were.

"Yuu?" he finally prompted, tired of waiting. "Not to rush you or anything, but are you planning to make a move any time soon?"

 _"What?"_ Kanda was startled, and a little annoyed. He'd been just about to say much the same thing. _"What're you talking about? I just went, it's your turn."_

"Huh? No, it's not. White just went," Lavi protested.

 _"Yeah, and I'm white."_

"No, I am."

They both paused, looking at the board. Lavi rubbed wearily at their eyes, trying to ease the headache that had been growing steadily worse over the last few days. "Okay, if we're both playing white that actually explains a lot about this pattern. So who's been placing the black stones?"

 _"I..."_ More than a little unnerved, Kanda stared at the stones and struggled to remember. They'd played so many games lately that they were all starting to run together in Kanda's mind. Two weeks back at the Order and they were no closer to a solution than the day they'd arrived. There really wasn't much else they _could_ do besides play Go.

"Right. Look, I'm the better player, so why don't I try to rescue black and you keep playing white?" Lavi suggested. Kanda's response was a burst of wordless irritation at the reminder that Lavi was better than he was, but the Japanese man didn't actually say anything.

Not that he needed to. They were so much in each other's heads now that it was sometimes hard to be certain which of them had been responsible for any particular thought. Lavi spoke out loud mostly as a reminder to both of them that it _was_ a conversation, and not just a single stream of thought.

 _"All right, fine,"_ Kanda agreed. He waited for Lavi to make a move, but the other man didn't so much as reach for a stone. Lavi was taking black, so that meant he needed to go next. Didn't it? Or... wait, hadn't they just been talking about white in context of who had to place the next stone? Now Kanda couldn't remember. _"Whose turn is it?"_

Lavi jumped, startled, and looked at the board. He'd been waiting... or, no, he'd been listening to Kanda waiting for him. Which meant...

Sighing, he rested their aching head in their hands and closed their eyes. "I have no idea," he admitted. "You know, I think we may be doing more harm than good, here. Playing Go means we're both thinking about exactly the same thing at the same time. Maybe we need to be doing something where we're thinking separately."

 _"Like what?"_ Kanda demanded. _"Reading presents the same problem. Lenalee's out with Allen, Komui's busy and Bookman's practically glued to your side in the infirmary. Nobody else knows the truth, so they wouldn't talk to us as individuals."_

"It still might be better if we had some kind of outside stimulus," Lavi said. "You're getting better at anticipating how I'll talk to the others as 'you', but it's still something we think differently about."

 _"So far."_

"Yeah, well, I'm trying to look on the bright side here." Lavi sighed again and started scooping the stones into their respective bowls.

 _"I suppose it'll at least be better than sitting here staring at the walls,"_ Kanda agreed.

They started to put away the Go board, and Kanda's attention was drawn as always to the lotus. Looking at the wilted petals lying at the bottom of the hourglass gave him a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, but today there was something else about it that was throwing him off. Kanda studied the flower, trying to put his finger on the problem.

"That's funny." Lavi paused and rested one hand lightly atop the hourglass, frowning. He could sense Kanda's confusion and uncertainty, but that was _all_ he was getting. "Normally, just looking at the thing makes you start throwing images and emotions at me."

 _That_ was the problem, Kanda realized with a growing sense of horror. _"I can't remember. Any of it. Lavi, I can't remember!"_

"Whoa, calm down," Lavi said, wincing as Kanda's panic made the headache abruptly worse. "What are you talking about?"

 _"The lotus. The spell! I can't remember **why** I did it."_ Kanda struggled to focus through the sharp pain in their head, but it was like reaching into a dark, empty room hoping to encounter one particular thread that might or might not be there. He remembered the spell itself, but nothing about why he would have made a pact like that. It _must_ have been important to him, how could he possibly forget it?

"You don't remember _why_?" Lavi repeated, a sick feeling growing in his chest. "You told me you were searching for someone, and didn't have time to deal with injuries."

 _"I... yeah. Yeah, I was searching."_ Kanda clung to Lavi's words, gripping them like a lifeline that might lead him out of the dark. It was like clinging to a phantom, unsubstantial and unhelpful. _"I was searching for... for... Damn it, I can't remember. Who was it?"_

"I don't know," Lavi said, much subdued as he stared down at the lotus and tried not to be absorbed by Kanda's growing panic. "You never did tell me any of the details, and I did my best not to pry. Why would you forget something like that?"

 _"What **else** have I forgotten?"_ Kanda retorted, chilled to the bone. He'd have shivered, if he'd had any control over their body. _"And what about you?"_

"I'm a Bookman," Lavi replied, shaking their head. "I don't forget anything, ever. Look, let's go find the old panda and ask him to check us over. Maybe whatever's been causing this damned headache is blocking your memories, too."

If Kanda had been in control they would have been running through the halls in search of Bookman, but Lavi stalked along at Kanda's normal pace, refusing to draw attention to themselves. They checked Bookman's rooms first, but there was no answer to their knock and when Lavi poked their head in, the room was empty. Frowning, Lavi closed the door again. "I guess he's probably with my body," he murmured under his breath.

They headed for the infirmary area, but were stopped before they'd gone more than a few floors down by a group of the researchers. "Oh, hey, Kanda," Johnny called, smiling tentatively at them. "Maybe you can settle this for us."

 _"We don't have time to chat,"_ Kanda snarled when Lavi paused on the stairs.

Lavi shook their head minutely, not bothering to answer Kanda aloud. It was a measure of how far he'd come in getting the others to accept Kanda as a potential friend that Johnny had spoken to them at all, but one harsh word or seeming rejection from Kanda right now could undo all that hard work. Whatever it was probably wouldn't take more than a moment. "What is it?" he asked gruffly.

"Who was the last shogun?" one of the others asked. "The one at the end of the civil war. We've been arguing about it for half an hour."

"Is that all?" Lavi snorted. He didn't even need Kanda's help to answer that. Questions about important military battles were something he could answer in his sleep. "Tokugawa Yo... Yo..." He blinked, his train of thought faltering. What the hell was the rest of the man's name? "Yoshi... what the hell?"

 _"Yoshinobu."_

Lavi heard Kanda's correction, but even with that prompting he couldn't make the memory of the relevant record come to the surface. The sour taste of fear rose in his throat, threatening to choke him. "I can't remember," he realized, stunned.

 _"It was Yoshinobu, I said."_ Impatient with the whole delay, Kanda's words came out more harshly than he'd meant them to. So he _wasn't_ the only one losing things. On the one hand that made him feel a little smug, but on the other it was absolutely terrifying. Lavi's memory _was_ much better than his, and if it was failing they were really in serious trouble.

Lavi was rapidly working himself into a state of true panic, as he ran through other details of that particular bit of history in his mind and found more gaping holes. And chances were good it wasn't only this record he was missing. "How could I lose something so basic?" he exclaimed, agonized, forgetting to try to sound like Kanda. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Startled by his unexpected vehemence, Johnny and the others had drawn away from him a few steps. "Uh... Kanda, it's really not that important, it was just a stupid argument," Johnny said, raising his hands as if attempting to placate the swordsman. "I'm sure Komui or someone will know the answer..."

"It was Tokugawa Yoshinobu," Lavi said, reminded that he still hadn't actually given them the answer they'd wanted in the first place.

"Huh? I thought you didn't remember?" another researcher said, confused.

"I don't," Lavi replied grimly, confusing them further. "Where's Bookman right now, do any of you know?"

"Um... with Lavi, maybe?" someone suggested. "That's where he usually is..."

"No, Komui called for him a little while ago, he's probably still up in the boss' office," Johnny corrected, looking bewildered. "Why?"

"Nothing, it's not important," Lavi said, knowing he wasn't being convincing. Especially not when he turned and bolted back up the stairs, running at their top speed for Komui's office.

 _"Sure, **now** you're being urgent about it,"_ Kanda grumbled. _"When it actually affects you..."_

"Shut up," Lavi said, his voice tight and high with fear. The terse words actually succeeded in startling Kanda into silence. "You have no idea how bad this is. Bookmen don't forget things. Ever. _Ever_."

There was more to it than just having forgotten a few important historical facts, Kanda realized as he followed Lavi's racing thoughts. The one thing Lavi had never thought about, not once during the entire time Kanda had been privy to his thoughts, was his own past. Now Kanda could feel the other man reaching for those much more personal memories, and failing to find most of them.

Like Kanda not being able to remember who it was he was searching for, the loss of those memories was absolutely unthinkable. The headache already pounding in their skull increased another notch in intensity, making them both dizzy with the pain of it.

"Bookman. Bookman!" Lavi shouted, bursting through Komui's door and uncaring that they were clearly interrupting a meeting. Komui and Reever were staring at him in surprise, and Bookman rose from his seat, frowning at the sight of them in such a state.

"What's going on?" the old man demanded, eyes narrowed. "Calm down, you look like you're about to faint."

"Ask me something from the records," Lavi demanded, not even attempting to hold to the fiction that he was actually Kanda. When Bookman just blinked up at him in surprise, he repeated urgently, "Ask me something from the records, damn it. Anything!"

Bookman flicked a glance at their audience, but obliged the odd request. "What were the four major battles that culminated in Napoleon's defeat?" he asked.

"Waterloo," Lavi listed, lifting one hand and closing their fingers as he ticked off each name. "Ligny... uh, uh, Wavre... and... and..." A look of intense frustration crossed their face, accompanied by pure fear that only Kanda could feel. "Fuck, I can't remember! Damn it, Bookman, I can't remember anything! Johnny asked me who the last shogun was and I didn't know, I'm losing basic information like the names and locations of major battles..."

"Calm down," Bookman repeated more firmly, though Kanda could see the old man looked worried as well. "Panicking isn't going to get you anywhere."

"Don't you tell me to calm down, old panda," Lavi hissed, his terror finally surfacing in the form of anger at his master's casual attitude. "I can't remember my own _name_!"

 _"What? Your name's Lavi,"_ a startled Kanda told him, at the same moment that Reever said in confusion, "Uh, you're Kanda Yuu."

"Thanks, but that's not the one I was talking about," Lavi said wryly. His eyes were on Reever, but Kanda felt that the words had been meant for him as well.

Bookman looked first shocked, then as grimly worried as Lavi was. "What about Kanda?" he demanded.

"He's losing stuff too," Lavi replied, to Reever's obvious bewilderment. "Important stuff. Life-shatteringly important stuff. I don't know how we didn't notice it until now, but I'd be willing to bet it's been going on for a while."

Reever opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Komui waved for him to be silent and he wisely closed it again. Totally focused on the issue at hand, Lavi and Bookman both ignored the others. "Most likely it simply hadn't been brought to your attention before this," Bookman said. "I admit I was worried something of the sort might happen. The human mind isn't built to hold two complete psyches. I thought you might end up merging, but losing pieces of yourself would be just as viable a 'solution' to the problem of limited space."

"Two..." Reever clamped his mouth shut again, his eyes wide and thoughts racing clearly over his face.

"I'm not sure we aren't doing that, too," Lavi told him, rubbing a hand over their eyes wearily. "It's too easy to act and talk like him. I don't have to think about it at all. I do it even when I'm _not_ trying to. Worse, sometimes we're not sure which of us is thinking what. I'm almost afraid to pick up Mugen - I have a feeling I'd be a lot more proficient with it than I have any right to be."

 _"We've got to do something,"_ Kanda said, despairing. _"We're gonna lose ourselves completely at this rate. Even if we found a way to separate right this moment, what if those lost memories don't come back?"_

"That would be worse for you than for me; at least everything important that's ever happened in my life is down in the records," Lavi said. "You've been so damned reclusive, nobody else has any idea what happened in your past so there isn't anyone to give you any answers. But it will be a moot point if we can't find a way to separate ourselves, and we haven't made any progress in that direction since we got back. Have we?" He gave Komui a desperate look.

Komui shook his head, looking sympathetic. "No, I'm afraid not. Without anything concrete to actually study, my researchers have nothing to work from. Gypsy curses aren't exactly our field of specialty."

Reever's eyes went impossibly wider, something Kanda and Lavi both might have found amusing under better circumstances. "Oh," he breathed out, speaking mostly to himself. "So _that's_ why..."

"There has to be something we can do," Bookman said, frowning and tucking his hands into his sleeves. "This situation simply cannot continue. At this rate, the two of you may well merge or lose yourselves entirely."

Neither Lavi nor Kanda could come up with a good reply for that, too horrified by the very notion. They'd gotten used to living in each other's heads, but only by clinging to the hope that it was temporary.

There was awkward silence for a moment in the room, with Komui and Bookman looking at them with pity. When Reever suddenly spoke, it made everyone else jump. "Uh, boss? You know, you really should have just told us _why_ you had taken a sudden interest in Gypsy lore," the researcher said. "I'd have suggested weeks ago that you go find a different Gypsy clan to question. If one Gypsy witch could actually do something like this, why couldn't another one reverse it?"

"A different clan." Lavi felt stunned at their own stupidity - or maybe the emotion came from Kanda. It was hard to tell and it didn't really matter, because the base sentiment was shared by both of them. "Fuck, how could we not have thought of that? Marda's not the only Gypsy witch out there."

 _"There's got to be **someone** out there who'd be willing to take the curse off, even if it's only because we offered them enough money,"_ Kanda agreed. _"I say we go now, right now."_

"Yeah, the sooner the better, probably," Lavi nodded, turning to his master. "Bookman? Yuu and I are all for running off right this second, what do you think?"

"I concur," Bookman said. "It shouldn't be that hard to find another clan, if Komui will just send out a call to all the Finders to report on any Romany clans in their area." He looked at Komui, who nodded.

"Of course I will," he said. "I'll have an answer for you by the time you're both - all? Er, by the time you're packed. Just let me..."

"Boss!" Johnny's panicked voice preceded the door crashing open by mere seconds. The researcher stood panting in the doorway, looking like he'd run the entire way to Komui's office. "Boss! And Bookman, too, thank God you're still here. It's Lavi, he's getting worse."

"Worse?" Lavi rounded on him sharply, fear rising up to choke them for the second time that day. "Worse how? What do you mean?"

"Uh..." Despite all of Lavi's work at improving Kanda's reputation among the rest of the Order, it was clear that Johnny was more than a little taken aback at Kanda's sudden fierce interest in the well being of his fellow Exorcist. "I don't know, exactly; one of the doctors grabbed me and told me to find Komui and Bookman and bring them down."

Lavi exchanged grim looks with Bookman. They pushed past a stunned Johnny, heading for the infirmary at a run. Lavi felt their heart pounding in their throat, threatening to cut off their air. Kanda wasn't much calmer, and their dual panic meant they were feeding off each other and making it even worse.

Kanda's longer legs meant they reached the infirmary ward quite a bit ahead of Bookman. They skidded to a halt in the doorway of the room where Lavi's body was being kept, where their way was blocked by no less than three of the doctors the Order kept always on hand. "Out of my way!" they snapped, too impatient to bother being polite.

Startled, the doctors moved aside, and Lavi felt their knees go weak at the sight of the bed before them. His body was far paler than it had been before, much more so than even a few weeks out of the sun could account for. There was a respirator over his mouth and nose, and one of the nurses was squeezing a hand pump to force air in and out of his lungs. Various monitors had been set up around the body, most of them beeping or buzzing frantic warnings.

"What's going on?" Bookman demanded as he appeared in the doorway. Stunned, Lavi couldn't even move, and his master had to physically push him aside to get into the room. Cursing the moment he saw the state Lavi's body was in, the old man rushed forward, already pulling out his needles.

Realizing they were getting light-headed, Kanda prodded mentally at Lavi. _"Breathe. Damn it, breathe, Lavi, or we're gonna pass out. Lavi!"_

Remembering the need for air, Lavi gasped once and started coughing. "I'm dying," he whispered, the words coming out as a terrified squeak. "Bookman, I'm dying, aren't I?" This was his worst nightmare come to life, the one possibility he'd been doing his best to avoid thinking about. What would happen to him if he didn't have a body to go back to?

The headache that had been plaguing them was pounding so hard in their head he wasn't sure they'd even be able to hear it when the old man answered, but it turned out they didn't need to. The grim expression on Bookman's face when he looked up told them everything they needed to know.

The headache surged, and it felt like every muscle in their body cramped up in protest. Lavi tried to cry out, tried to flail and catch something to help support them, but their body simply refused to respond. Kanda shouted something - a warning, a plea, even he wasn't sure - but it had no effect. They hit the ground, and darkness flooded over them too fast to fight. The last thing they saw before they lost the battle for consciousness was Bookman leaning over them.

The fact that the older man looked grim but unsurprised didn't reassure either of them at all.


	8. Chapter 8

When they woke again, it took them a moment to even sort themselves out enough to figure out where they were. Not that the sterile environment of the infirmary ward wasn't familiar to both of them - they'd had plenty of injuries over the years that had ended up with them spending time here. It was just that everything seemed vague and at a distance, as if the whole world was at one remove.

Wincing, holding one hand to their aching head, they sat up slowly. "What the fuck?"

The sound of their own voice startled them, lower than it should have been but at the same time with an inflection that wasn't familiar. After a brief moment of internal struggle, they managed to separate enough to orient themselves again. Kanda's voice, Lavi's speech. There were two of them in here, not just one.

"Yuu? Are you okay?" Lavi asked, their voice hoarse as if with abuse or disuse. How long had they been asleep? Why were they in the infirmary?

 _"As much as you are,"_ Kanda said sourly. _"Our head hurts. What happened?"_

Before Lavi could come up with any kind of answer, or even a theory, a woman in a nurse's uniform poked her head in the door. "Oh, you are awake! Thank God. Bookman wasn't sure if you would regain consciousness or not. How do you feel?"

Memory came back to them all in a rush, and they went rigid. They'd discovered that their memories were fading, then learned that Lavi's body was failing, before finally collapsing in shock. Or something. Frowning, they shook their head. "I feel like shit, and Yuu doesn't seem to be doing much better," Lavi told her with a weak excuse for a smile. Then they blinked, as it occurred to them that they might have just thoroughly confused her if she didn't know the details of their situation.

But the look she was giving them was sympathetic, not confused, so somebody must have filled her in. Hell, the whole Order was probably talking about it by now, after the display they'd put on. "Uh, how long have we been unconscious? What happened, exactly, do you know?"

"We're not entirely certain," she admitted, coming forward to plump up the pillows behind them to make it easier for them to sit up. Kanda was a bit ashamed to realize they needed the support. It made him feel weak, something he wasn't used to and didn't like in the least.

"You've been asleep for about a day," she continued. "You had what seems to have been some sort of seizure. Bookman explained the whole situation to us, but frankly it's far beyond even our capabilities to analyze and treat. Physically there's nothing wrong with your body. Bookman said it's rebelling against the overload and starting to shut down in an effort to protect yourself. Uh, yourselves."

Almost afraid to ask the question, they had to swallow hard before they could form the words. "And my body? Is it still alive?"

"For the moment," she said. That was a better answer than they'd feared, but not what they'd been hoping to hear. Seeing their crestfallen expression, she patted their hand with a look of pity. "Bookman managed to stabilize your condition before he left, but he warned us that it's only temporary. We've got someone watching around the clock, ready to react on a moment's notice if something goes wrong. Oh, and he also said to tell you that the more stress you put on your system in this body, the more stress is put on Lavi's body as well."

"Great. So all we have to do is find a state of perfect Zen peace, and we'll have no problems." They sighed, and pinched the bridge of their nose. "Unfortunately that's not likely to happen. Where did Bookman go? Out to find another Romany clan? He didn't go by himself, did he?"

"I believe he took Krory with him," she told them. "Other than that, I'm afraid I really can't tell you much."

They did a quick assessment of their physical state, and weren't too displeased with what they found. The lotus spell appeared to have recognized _this_ as something that needed healing, at least - even the lingering weakness was fading rapidly. They weren't sure they wanted to test it too much, but they wouldn't be bedridden.

Assuming, of course, they could get doctor's permission to get out of bed in the first place. "When can we leave? We're feeling much better."

"Well, I don't know," she said, looking uncertain. "It would probably be best for you to stay here, under observation. If you had another attack and couldn't be brought to the infirmary in time, we might not be able to stabilize you again. Especially without Bookman's help."

They had a brief internal argument, and the difference in opinion helped to separate them a little further. Kanda wanted _out_ of that room, away from the physical reminder of how precarious their situation was. Lavi was more inclined to follow doctor's orders, not as used to having the lotus spell to rely on and wary of the idea that Bookman wouldn't be around to fix them if something went wrong again. Kanda pointed out that sitting around with nothing to do but brood over the situation wasn't going to help them keep from getting stressed, and Lavi reluctantly agreed.

"Not that we don't appreciate the concern, but we think a change of scenery is definitely in order," they told her, swinging their legs around to slide off the bed. Someone had stripped them down to just Kanda's pants and shirt, but their jacket was hanging from a hook nearby. Grabbing it, they shrugged into it, hands doing up the buttons with the ease of an automatic reflex. A second reflex had them slinging Mugen's belt and sheath over their hips, which made Kanda feel instantly more relaxed. They slipped a hand into one pocket of the jacket, and Lavi felt a little better when their fingers encountered the familiar shape of Oodzuchi Kodzuchi.

Perhaps seeing how easily they were moving, she capitulated. "All right, but be careful," she warned them. "If you feel any signs of another approaching fit, or if that headache gets any worse, come back here right away."

"We will," they promised her, and made good on their escape before she could change her mind and call them back.

Once safely out in the hall, they turned away from the infirmary and headed for the main floors of the Order. _"Aren't you going to check on your body?"_ Kanda asked, surprised by the move.

"Frankly, Yuu, I don't really want to see it right now," Lavi told him, subdued. "It was the shock and panic of seeing myself dying that pushed us over the edge last time. I don't think a repeat performance is really a good idea. 'Stabilized' doesn't mean 'better', and we don't need the added stress."

 _"Good point,"_ Kanda acknowledged, sighing. _"So, now what? The rumours will be all over the Order, I don't particularly want to have to deal with a barrage of questions from everyone in the mess."_

"Me, neither. And probably nobody realizes that it's been me in control this whole time - I'd rather not disabuse them of the notion and undo all my hard work getting them to accept you," Lavi agreed. "Going back to our room to read or play more Go doesn't seem like a really good idea, though. We've already discovered where that leaves us. And have you noticed...?"

 _"That it's much harder to even think of ourselves as separate people?"_ Kanda finished, his voice grim. _"Yes. Though we seem to be slowly improving. Let's not tempt ourselves into backsliding."_

"Which doesn't leave us with a whole lot of options."

They paused in the middle of an intersection as they considered the problem. In one direction lay the main rooms of the Order, including the mess hall where the majority of people would likely be. In the opposite direction were the personal quarters and offices, but there was nothing for them to do there except the options they'd already rejected. Below them were the open practice areas; they _could_ go do some shadow sparring, either unarmed or with Mugen, but Lavi thought that might be inviting trouble too, and Kanda agreed.

Ahead of them was the elevator that led down out of headquarters and into the nearby city, where the members of the Order sometimes went to relax and do their shopping. _"Why don't we go out?"_ Kanda suggested. _"It's at least something we haven't done before. We can get something to eat without being deluged with questions. As long as we don't get worked up about anything, it shouldn't be a problem that we've gone so far. Frankly, without Bookman I doubt they can really do much of anything to help us, anyway."_

Their stomach chose that moment to growl, and Lavi chuckled in wry response. "Yeah, sounds like a plan," he agreed. With a slightly more optimistic swing to their step, they headed for the elevator. If they could just keep themselves distracted until Bookman got back with a solution - hopefully _soon_ \- maybe they would still get through this in one piece. Or better yet, two pieces.

Once out in the city, there was indeed plenty to distract them. Lavi and Kanda almost immediately got into an argument over what they should eat for lunch, which Lavi won by pointing out that he'd been forced to eat nothing but Kanda's favourite foods for the last two weeks. Then they went strolling along the streets, window-gazing and people-watching as they munched on a tart they'd bought for desert.

Kanda quickly discovered that people-watching was absolutely fascinating when he could listen to Lavi's thought processes. The other man neatly slotted almost everyone they saw into categories based on details Kanda would never even have noticed. When he realized Kanda was listening in and amused, Lavi made the effort to actually explain his assumptions.

"That guy's cheating on his wife," Lavi murmured, watching a moderately attractive man in his mid-forties escorting a giggling younger woman down the street. "See the whiter band of skin on his left ring finger? He's taken off a wedding band so she doesn't know he's married. He's probably not a widower, or else he really isn't mourning his wife at all. The contrast in skin tones is too sharp for him to have taken the ring off more than a day or two ago."

 _"And that one?"_ Kanda asked, as a woman in shabby clothing walked by the pair in the opposite direction.

"Genteel poverty," Lavi replied promptly. "Formerly wealthy family, maybe even nobility, but they've gone broke in the last generation. That dress is remade from clothes a generation out of date, and worn even so. But she still carries herself with pride. Maybe a governess or something similar - working for a living, but better than a true servant."

The exercise was not only entertaining, it was also helping Kanda to feel more and more separate from Lavi. _"What's going on over there?"_ he asked, spotting a minor commotion a little further down the street.

"I'm not sure, it looks like there's some kind of market stand that's drawing attention." Lavi went up on tiptoe, trying for a better view. They caught a flash of brightly coloured fabrics, and their heart sped up. "Holy... you don't think that's a Romany, do you?" He didn't know many other people who would dress in such a garish style.

 _"Could we actually be lucky enough that there's a Gypsy clan passing through here right now?"_ Kanda said, stunned. _"Why wouldn't Komui have just sent Bookman to them?"_

"Maybe he did, and they couldn't help. Or maybe they were between towns when Komui called around to the Finders, so nobody knew they were on their way," Lavi replied, worming their way through the gathering crowd around the booth. "Either way, I'm going to ask and make sure for ourselves."

Their luck was even better than he'd hoped, Lavi realized as they got closer to the front of the mob. The crowd had been drawn because the Romany woman was telling fortunes for a mere pittance, laying out simple tarot spreads for anyone brave enough to come forward and offer a single penny. She might have been charging so little because she was a fake and couldn't make a true prediction, but there was something about her that reminded Kanda instantly of the sense of power he'd felt around Marda. That had to be a good sign.

When they reached the front of the crowd, she looked up and gave them a sly smile. "Hello, boys," she purred, shocking them both. "Oh aye, I can see there are two of you in there. That curse placed on you is a most impressive one. You have come to find out how to have it broken, I assume. Shall I tell you?"

This was surely too good to be true. Vague warning bells were going off in the back of their minds, but they were both too desperate to have the spell removed to care. At this point, anything she might ask as a price would be more than worth it. "Yes, please!" they exclaimed, moving closer. If she was powerful enough to be able to instantly tell the nature of the curse on them, surely she was powerful enough to break it.

"Well, let's see what the cards have to say, then," she said, sweeping up the last spread in a dramatic motion and shuffling the cards fast enough that they had trouble following the motion. "The first card is the path, the challenge you face. Ah? There's two cards stuck together," she noted as she drew the 'first' card. "The ace of swords and the ace of wands, that's interesting. Air and Fire twined together, your paths are connected and your challenges inextricable."

"That's true enough," they agreed wryly. Despite the fact that Kanda had never believed in fortune-telling or the ability of a deck of cards to divine the answer to problems before this current mess had begun, he found himself hanging on the woman's every word and watching for the next card just as eagerly as Lavi. Marda had made a believer out of him, that much was certain.

"The second card is the cliff, the danger you face," she told them, laying out another card. "The tower!" They flinched, remembering the bolt of lighting the second level Akuma had summoned using that card, the one that had nearly fried Lavi's poor, helpless body to a crisp. "False beliefs and false structures will come tumbling down all at once. The process will be violent." She shook her head, her dark eyes giving a silent warning. "The last card is the fence, the thing that will save you. Are you ready?"

Something tugged at the back of their mind. No, at the back of Lavi's mind, specifically. There was something about the picture on the tower card... something familiar... he'd even been thinking about it just a second ago...

But Kanda's impatience for the next card, which would surely give them the answer they needed, was overwhelming. Lavi was caught up in it and the memory he'd been reaching for, like so many other memories he'd lost, went floating away into the void of the forgotten.

The woman paused dramatically, then flipped over the last card to reveal a grinning skeleton holding a wicked-looking scythe. Their heart skipped a beat - Kanda didn't know the card meanings, but Lavi did, and the knowledge leapt to the front of both of their minds at the same moment the woman crowed, "Death! Each new beginning first requires an end."

Too late, the memory Lavi had been trying to grasp came to both of them in a flash. The tower card hadn't just reminded them of the card used by the Akuma - the picture had been identical. Desperately they threw themselves backwards, and the scythe that came swinging down at them out of nowhere only cut a deep slice into their left thigh, instead of chopping their arm off.

Instantly the crowd around them started screaming and panicking, threatening to trample one another as they tried to get away from the unexpected danger. With a chilling laugh the 'woman' before them transformed rapidly into the second level Akuma that had been hunting down the Romany clans. The image it displayed was the same grinning skeleton from the card, and the scythe came flying towards them once again.

They rolled and just barely managed to avoid the attack this time. They were bleeding freely from the cut on their leg, but when they scrambled to their feet they discovered it thankfully wasn't enough to prevent them from standing. They wouldn't be able to move easily or make use of Kanda's natural speed, but at least they weren't sitting ducks.

 _"Draw Mugen,"_ Kanda ordered frantically, not understanding why Lavi hadn't already gone for the sword. _"Damn it, Lavi, what are you waiting for?"_

"As close as we're linked now, I'll end up using _your_ memories if I try to wield it," Lavi pointed out, clumsily dodging another attack. "You heard what Bookman said. We might merge completely."

 _"Would you rather **die**?"_ Kanda asked in disbelief. _"Because that's what's going to happen if you don't do something."_

"Fuck," Lavi swore, and gripped Mugen's hilt with a white-knuckled hand. This time there was no awkwardness to the motion when they drew the blade, and it seemed to fit naturally in their hand like an extension of their arm. That didn't make either of them feel better about the situation, but Kanda was right that they had no choice.

"Innocence, activate!" they shouted, and the dark blade of Mugen shone with silver fire as the Innocence came to life in their hand. They lunged forward, slashing rapidly at the Akuma, and it was forced to withdraw into the air to avoid the blows.

"Oh, no you don't," they snarled, and leapt up after it. The cut in their leg ached fiercely, but the lotus spell was already working to repair it and they'd both fought with far worse. The jump took them up high enough to lash out at the Akuma again, and this time they felt the blade bite into the Akuma's solid skin.

It shrieked in anger and pain, and spun in place. The motion dislodged Mugen and they were thrown back towards the ground. "The Devil! The chains of temptation will bind and enslave you." The picture on its face turned to a leering, goat-horned man.

Half a dozen linked chains shot out from the Akuma, and one of them connected solidly with their off hand. Instantly it wrapped around their arm, the links melding and solidifying into a tight cuff. "Hey! The chains are supposed to be voluntary, loose enough to remove!" Lavi - it was definitely Lavi, Kanda had no idea what he was talking about - protested angrily as they tried to shake off the cuff.

The Akuma just laughed at them, and spun again. "Judgement! Let the sword of justice balance the scales."

Kanda remembered _that_ card well enough. Half a dozen people caught in the mob trying to flee the square abruptly stopped running and turned back, their bodies bloating and swelling in the way that only a first level Akuma breaking free could cause. But not just any first levels - no, these ones had the same deadly swords and impossibly tough armour as the last ones they'd fought under the influence of the Judgement card.

With their movements restricted by the heavy chain, the wound on their leg still not completely healed, and hampered by Lavi's relative unfamiliarity with swords despite the knowledge gained through their partial merge, they had no chance to win this fight. _"Lavi!"_ Kanda cried, despairing.

"I know, damn it," Lavi replied, gritting their teeth. "We don't have a choice. _Kaichuu: Ichigen_!" The command came from both of them at once, and the sword lightened abruptly in their hand as the blade turned into the familiar swarm of insects. They flew for the level ones, cutting a deadly swath through the cluster of Akuma despite the enhanced shielding on the monsters.

"Wheel of Fate! Up becomes down, and all things must fall after rising." The Akuma spun once more, casting the spell they'd expected. The Hell's Insects faltered and crashed against the next Akuma they encountered, failing to penetrate its armour in their weakened state.

But they'd served their purpose - they'd given Lavi and Kanda the moment of breathing room they'd needed. In sheer desperation Lavi threw his mind wide open, giving up his hold on the last barriers he'd struggled to keep between himself and Kanda. Kanda did the same, and there was a feeling like a puzzle piece snapping into place as they reached for each other and connected.

The Insects reformed into Mugen's blade and he slashed sharply downwards at the chain binding him. Metal screeched against metal for an ear-splitting moment, before the chain gave way beneath the blade of the Innocence. A short length of it still dangled from his arm, but as long as he remembered to account for it he wouldn't have any problems.

With a growl he threw himself into the air again, using the crowded buildings around him to push off from and change his direction in a rapid zigzag motion. The remaining level ones attacked him, but he dodged and wove agilely between their swords and bullets, slashing each one in turn. The enhanced armour resisted his attacks but couldn't stop them completely, and in short order all three were nothing more than balls of fire and dust behind him.

Spinning on one foot, he thrust himself upwards once more, heading for the second level this time. Seeing him coming, the Akuma screeched in fear. "Chariot! The journey..."

That was one card he'd seen too many times already. He couldn't afford to let the damned thing get away again. Power surged through him, and a ring of glowing green symbols formed around him. The kanji for fire floated in front of his eyes, and with a snarl he lashed out to strike it squarely with Mugen's blade. "Gouka Kaijin!"

The roar of fire drowned out the shriek of the Akuma, the air protesting the sudden temperature change as the flame snake snapped out towards the second level. It screamed once more, and he could vaguely see it writhing within the fire, but it couldn't seem to escape.

Only when the chain on his arm abruptly disintegrated and he was certain the thing was dead did he allow the flames to die. Landing heavily on the cobbled street, he staggered and clutched at the nearest wall for support, a renewed headache pounding in his temples. He could hardly see straight, and only the familiar feel of Mugen's hilt clutched in his hand gave him any sense of reality at all.

"Kanda! Lavi!"

"Are you all right?"

Two familiar voices called to him from further down the road, and he wearily lifted his head to see Allen and Lenalee running towards him. Lenalee was hopping from one roof to another with the ease granted to her by her Dark Boots, scanning the crowd presumably watching for any other Akuma that might appear. Allen's left arm was active, the flare of green fire around his shoulder unmistakeable.

With an effort he straightened and did his best not to wince every time the headache sent a spike of pain through his skull. He didn't particularly want the two younger Exorcists fussing over him, but they would if they realized how much he was hurting. "I'm fine," he asserted as they drew close enough for him not to have to raise his voice. "I can certainly handle one second level, there's no need for you to panic."

They pulled up short in front of him, Lenalee dropping down from the nearest roof to join Allen. They were both looking at him with expressions of wide-eyed apprehension, which made him scowl back at them. "What?" he snapped, pain making the word come out more irritated than he'd meant it to.

"Um. Kanda? Is that you?" Lenalee asked tentatively.

He gave her a blank stare in return, trying to figure out why her words made him feel vaguely uneasy. "What are you talking about? I..."

Memory returned, slowly and painfully. Lenalee did have reason to question him, didn't she? There were two of him in here. No, two _different_ people, not two of him. He was... he was...

Desperately he struggled for a memory that would tell him who he was. Yes, there was one of endless training, practicing the same sword swing for hours at a time until the movements were ingrained in his muscle memory and he didn't have to think about it any more. That was Kanda's memory, it had to be. Yet, equally clear was a memory of Bookman drilling him relentlessly on tiny details from the records, insisting on perfection and accepting nothing less. That memory was Lavi's, obviously.

They couldn't both be his. Could they? Who _was_ he?

"Which... which one am I supposed to be?" he asked carefully, forcing the words out around the redoubled pain in his head.

"Lavi has been the one in control of your body ever since you got back from your last mission," Allen said, keeping his words even and his tone smooth as if he was talking to a frightened animal that might bolt on him. "Unless something has changed, it should still be Lavi who's talking to us."

Should it? Was it? With a wrenching effort that took everything they had, Kanda and Lavi managed to force a tiny amount of space between them again. "I... yes. Yeah, I'm Lavi," he asserted, giving in to the need to wince and cradle their head in their hands. They didn't even realize they'd slid down the wall to sit on the ground until they saw the way Lenalee and Allen were leaning over them, hovering at a slight distance.

 _"Wait, why does Allen know that?"_ Kanda demanded. _"He was on a mission when the rest of the Order found out."_

They glared first at Allen, then at Lenalee who must have told him. After a long moment when the two younger Exorcists simply looked back at them in confusion, they realized that they hadn't actually spoken the words out loud. Only Lavi had heard Kanda's question.

"How does Allen know?" he asked hoarsely, relaying the thought.

Allen gave them a crooked smile in response. "I've known something was going on since the first night you were back," he said. "It didn't take too much to figure out what had to be happening, as strange as the thought was. When I confronted Lenalee she admitted it, but it's not her fault I know."

Remembering the way the other boy had caught them arguing in the hall that first day, they grimaced and conceded the point. "We have... to get back to the Order," they said, talking around the pain. "Last time... we hurt this bad... Lavi's body started to die. Bookman warned us... not to get stressed."

All of them glanced over the wreckage of the square and the smouldering remains of the Akuma, and Allen snorted. "So much for not being stressed. Come on, we'll help you get back."

It was embarrassing as hell, but they needed Allen under their arm on one side and Lenalee on the other just to be able to walk in a straight line. Limping along, they made their agonizingly slow way back to the elevator that would return them to the Order.

They were grimly unsurprised to see a crowd of people outside the door of the room that held Lavi's body, and hear the urgent beeping of the monitors inside once again. What did surprise them was when they shoved their way through and found Bookman by the side of the bed, working his needles to try to stabilize the body's condition once more.

The old man looked up when they entered, and grunted his disapproval. "Idiots, both of you," he declared. "What part of 'don't stress yourselves' didn't you understand? You're lucky Krory and I had returned so quickly, or you'd be short one body."

They winced, but there wasn't really much they could say. "How did you get back so fast?" they asked, subdued. They weren't sure whether it originated with Kanda or Lavi, but hope stirred within them as one possible solution occurred to them. "Did you get a cure already?"

To their dismay, Bookman shook his head. "No, the clan we tracked down didn't have a wisewoman of their own. But they'd heard rumours of the Akuma travelling in the direction of headquarters, and I realized it must have been stalking the two of you. We came back in double time, but by the time I found out you'd left the building, your body was already going into convulsions and I couldn't go searching for you."

"The Akuma's dead, once and for all," they assured him with a certain amount of weary satisfaction. However badly this whole thing turned out, at least they could say that much. It looked like that was the _only_ satisfaction they were going to get. "We had to merge completely to defeat it, though. We're separate again for the moment, but we can already feel the walls slipping. It's only a matter of time - and we're talking maybe minutes. Hours, if we're lucky."

Bookman closed his eyes and lowered his head, resigned. "There's nothing more we can do," he admitted. "All that's left is to pray that you _do_ merge and leave one functioning Exorcist behind, rather than losing so much of yourselves that there isn't enough of either of you to stay coherent."

That thought was even more terrifying than everything else that had come before, and they grimaced. "Thanks for the encouragement, old panda," they said.

"No," Lenalee exclaimed, tears in her eyes as she turned to them. "No, this can't happen. You can't give up! You just have to hold on a little longer, we'll _all_ go searching for a Gypsy that can help you."

"Sorry, Lenalee." They looked down at her, and they weren't sure which of them was more surprised by the genuine regret they felt. "I wish it didn't have to be this way."

Desperately Lavi forced himself a little further apart from Kanda, struggling to hang on to the distance. He knew what they had to do, the only possible chance they had. "There's only one thing for it. One of us has to let go."

 _"What?"_ Stunned, Kanda couldn't find words to answer that. He could read what Lavi was thinking, understood exactly what the other man meant by 'let go', but how could either of them do that? They'd both fought so hard to cling to life, and it wasn't in either of their natures to ever give up.

"We have to," Lavi insisted. "You heard the old man. If we don't, there might not be enough left of either of us to even have a functioning human being. Maybe there's still a chance for one of us to recover, given the space to do it in. But only if we act now."

 _"If you think for one second I'm just handing my body over to you without a fight..."_

"I never said it was going to be you, did I?" Lavi interrupted Kanda's tirade. "It's your body, Yuu. I'm the interloper here."

"Lavi," Bookman said sharply, giving them a harsh look. Lavi shrugged back at him, a sheepish look crossing their face.

"I'm no good to you like this anyway, old man," he said. "Yuu's senses aren't worth shit, and his memory capacity and attention to detail aren't much better. That's even assuming I wouldn't continue to fade regardless, since this isn't the body I belong in." He sighed. "Truth is, I'd make a hell of a lousy Bookman like this."

And, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't just talking about his physical condition. The way Kanda had forced him to confront his own true feelings, combined with the sharp envy he'd felt even as he helped Kanda to gain a place among their fellow members of the Order, were signs he couldn't keep ignoring. Especially considering what he was volunteering to do right now. A true Bookman would never sacrifice himself for someone else - it went against everything he'd ever been trained in.

The assurance that it wasn't Kanda who was going to have to let go made the Japanese man feel better for all of about three seconds, until he registered the further implications. If _he_ wasn't the one letting go, then...

 _"No. Don't even **think** about it,"_ he snarled, dropping the walls between them and scrambling to try to get a solid hold on Lavi. After everything they'd been through, after everything Lavi had done for him, after the pain he'd unwittingly inflicted on the other man, Kanda would be _damned_ if he'd just sit back and let the asshole sacrifice himself like some kind of damned temple maiden. Even if the image of Lavi as a virgin sacrifice would have made him snort in amusement under other circumstances.

"No choice, Yuu." Lavi smiled down at Lenalee, who was clutching at him with a panicked look in her eyes. "Sorry, Lenalee. You've... meant a lot to me, I wouldn't want to hurt you if I could avoid it. But there's no sense in us both suffering."

He closed his eyes, and forced himself to let go - not of his barriers, this time, but of his fierce sense of self and his refusal to give up on life. Lavi was fighting against every instinct he had, but he _had_ to do this, or they were both going to end up dying. Even if there was enough of them left to make a whole person afterwards, that person wouldn't be either of _them_.

 _"Lavi. Don't you dare. Lavi!"_ Kanda grew increasingly panicked as he felt Lavi slipping away from him, and couldn't do a damned thing to stop him. _"Lavi. **La**_ vi. Lavi!"

What had started out as a mental shout became a croaked protest, and he felt himself collapsing like a puppet with strings cut, every muscle going limp at once. If not for the support of Lenalee and Allen on either side of him he'd have hit the ground like a sack of rocks.

It took his stunned brain a moment to realize what was happening. He'd stopped instinctively trying to move his body long ago, resigning himself to the fact that Lavi had total control. Without Lavi's guidance, there was now _nothing_ directing his body. Kanda fought to regain some sense of himself, his body twitching and shuddering as he tried to relearn how to use it. They lowered him carefully to the ground, helping him to sit against the wall but giving him the freedom to try to move on his own.

"Lavi!" he cried out, anguished. Again and again he reached out to try to connect with that too-familiar mind that had become so much a part of his, but there was nothing but emptiness.

"Kanda?" Lenalee asked uncertainly, leaning over him with wide eyes. Beyond her he could see Allen and the doctors hovering nervously, showing varying degrees of shock and grief. Only the Bookman was devoid of emotion, his lined face revealing nothing. Kanda remembered what Lavi had shown him of a Bookman's 'heart', and wondered if the old man felt anything at all over the loss of his heir.

"I... yes," Kanda choked out, having trouble even forming the words. He'd forgotten how to speak, too, becoming accustomed to having Lavi able to read his very thoughts. "Idiot. That... that... idiot!"

It was the worst insult he could think of on short notice, even though he knew now that Lavi was just about the furthest person from an 'idiot' that he'd ever met. He felt wetness on his cheeks, and was startled to realize that although his voluntary motor functions seemed to be suffering, his involuntary reflexes were not - he was crying, tears running over his face in a show of grief that would have left most of the Order gaping at him in disbelief.

"Lavi?" That question came from Allen, and the grim tone indicated the boy already knew the answer.

Kanda shook his head clumsily anyway, pounding weakly at the floor with one fist. "He's gone. He... idiot!"

Lenalee sobbed once and buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with the force of her grief. Allen gathered her awkwardly against him, trying to offer comfort. He was crying as well, the tears sliding over the red marks of his curse to soak into his collar.

Kanda's instincts were shouting at him to get away, to find somewhere private to deal with his own anguish, away from all these prying eyes. But at the same time a new part of him was aching to reach out, to ask for some of that same comfort for himself. He'd always scorned the idea that pain shared was pain halved - if two people were grieving, didn't that make for twice as much grief? But Lenalee was turning to Allen like he was a lifeline, and Kanda found himself torn between turning away, or trying to get closer. He struggled with himself, trapped and not knowing how to even ask for help without Lavi there to prompt him.

"Geez, Yuu. Weren't you payin' attention?" The hauntingly familiar whisper seemed to float through his mind, and Kanda's head snapped up so fast he smacked it against the wall behind him. "Don't overanalyse ev'rything so damned much."

"Lavi?" he gasped, once again reaching for the other man's - no, damn it, admit it, for his _friend's_ mind. There was still nothing there, his efforts fetching up against a glass wall that left him achingly alone inside his own head.

A softly amused snort was his answer. "Stop tryin' t'give yourself a migraine, dummy. I'm over here."

"Lavi? Lavi!" This time it was Lenalee who reacted, the first one to break free of the shock that had held everyone in the room motionless for a critical moment. She pulled free of Allen's arms and threw herself... at the bed, much to Kanda's confusion, scrambling to her feet and almost falling onto the mattress.

From the angle where he was sitting against the wall Kanda couldn't see anything happening above him, but he certainly heard the 'oof!' of displaced air and breathy chuckled that followed. "Easy, Lenalee. Dunno how much abuse this body can take just yet. Y'don't wanna knock me out of it before I get resettled."

Disbelieving, Kanda hauled himself to his feet by sheer force of will. Allen caught at his arm, helping him to stay standing, and for once it didn't even occur to Kanda to snap at the boy. He was too busy staring at the redhead lying in the bed, one green eye laughing back at him over an armful of Lenalee.

"Hey, Yuu," Lavi greeted him, his voice weak but speaking more like himself than he had been in weeks. "Sounded like y'missed me for a minute there. I'm touched."

"Touched in the head, more like," Kanda replied automatically, his mouth seemingly disconnected from his brain. "You... you... _how_?"

"Dunno." Lavi gave a weak shrug, jostling Lenalee who was still clinging to him like a sobbing leech. "Closed my eyes in your body, opened 'em again in mine. If I'd known it'd be _that_ easy..."

"You never tried just willing yourself back into your own body?" Bookman demanded, disbelieving.

" 'Course we did, y'old panda," Lavi retorted scornfully, rolling his eye at his master. "Only thing we ever got for the effort was a headache. But that's not what I did, this time. I just... let go. I wasn't tryin' to live, I was tryin' to die, to let Yuu survive."

Lavi's eyes met his, and Kanda felt a tangled knot of emotions seize up inside his chest. There was so much that had passed between them, more than could ever possibly be expressed by words. "Idiot," he repeated once more, softly.

Lavi gave him a quirked smile that was nothing like his usual carefree grin. Then again, having lived inside the other man's head for so long, Kanda knew just how artificial that normal grin really was. This smile felt more like the real thing.

" 'Sides, that witch was trying t'teach us something, remember?" Lavi prompted his master. He lifted a shaking hand to run his fingers through Lenalee's hair, making her look up at him with a watery smile that he returned. "Maybe... maybe we finally learned our lessons."

Bookman made an unhappy noise. "Accepted your heart, have you?" he grumbled, looking displeased in the extreme.

"Sacrificed m'self for him, didn't I?" Lavi countered. "And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Yuu?" He looked over at Kanda, who felt himself inexplicably flushing.

"Maybe other people aren't entirely useless," Kanda acknowledged, the admission painful and hard-won but all the more sincere for it. He felt Allen squeeze his arm, and looked down in surprise to find the boy giving him a genuine smile.

"We've always been your friends, Kanda, even if you didn't want to be ours," Allen said. "Though I will admit, watching Lavi manipulate everyone into liking you was highly amusing!"

Lavi laughed again, and Kanda felt like he couldn't get enough of the sound. Tentatively he smiled back at the redhead, and got an even wider smile in response.

"Can't say I appreciate her methods, but maybe Marda wasn't entirely off her rocker after all," Lavi said. "So whaddaya say, Yuu? Friends?" He offered his free hand, the one that wasn't buried in Lenalee's hair.

Looking deep into the other man's green eye, Kanda saw his own resigned acceptance mirrored there and knew that the offer was genuine, not another facet of Lavi's false outward persona. Firmly, Kanda nodded, and reached out to grasp Lavi's wrist. "Friends."

Maybe 'friends' wasn't such a dirty word to either of them after all.


	9. Epilogue

Pausing just inside the door to the mess hall, Kanda looked around and tried not to appear as awkward as he felt. Despite the lateness of the hour there were still several people in the room, small clumps of Finders and researchers who'd come for a last drink before bed - or maybe for another cup of strong coffee to keep them going.

Lavi had always made it look so easy, just walking up and plunking them down in one of the groups, insinuating them into the conversation in a way that seemed natural and only drew a _few_ disbelieving stares from the others. No matter how many times Kanda had watched him do it, he still wasn't at all confident of his own ability to recreate the phenomenon.

Yet he didn't want to go back to his room. His cold, silent room, where the lotus sat in solitary splendour on his dresser and the polished Go board on the table stood empty like an accusation. He'd barely slept for the last few nights, tossing and turning in a bed that seemed oddly too large. Or maybe it was just that he felt like he didn't take up as much space as he had a few days before, as ridiculous as the notion was.

So he'd come here, looking for company, but he was already mostly convinced it had been a bad idea. Refusing to allow himself to feel lost, he sighed and turned to leave again.

"Hey." The unexpected voice from his left startled him, and he spun on one heel. He found Lavi leaning back in a chair in the corner, an unusually solitary spot for the outgoing redhead. Then again, Kanda had learned the hard way how much of Lavi's extroverted behaviour was actually a cover for a much more private person inside.

"Couldn't sleep?" Lavi asked, one eyebrow lifted in query.

"No," Kanda admitted tersely. Then, reluctantly, he added, "It's... too quiet."

"Yeah, I know what y'mean." Lavi gave him a sympathetic smile. "I'm not used t'being alone in my head anymore. Keep waitin' for you t'give your input on everything." He kicked the leg of the chair closest to him, sending it scraping over the stone floor away from the table in an obvious invitation. "Plenty of room for both of us."

"For a change," Kanda muttered, making Lavi chuckle softly. Kanda's hesitation before he sat was so brief most people would probably never have noticed, but he didn't miss the way Lavi's smile quirked slightly at the edges in response. They really did know each other far too well now.

Without asking, Lavi snagged a second glass and poured out a measure of whatever was in the open bottle he had on the table. "Here's t'being able to _see_ each other when we talk," Lavi said, offering him the glass.

"I'll drink to that," Kanda agreed, and knocked his glass against Lavi's. It turned out to be plum wine, and it was his turn to raise an eyebrow at the redhead after he sipped. "You've got better taste than I gave you credit for," he murmured, settling into his chair.

Lavi chuckled. "There's still a few things about me y'don't know, Yuu. Not many, but a few. Memories comin' back?"

"Slowly, but yes," Kanda said, and Lavi nodded. Kanda took that as an indication that the same was true for Lavi, and he felt more than a little relief.

There was silence between them for a moment as they both savoured their wine, but it wasn't an awkward silence. By the same token, it felt perfectly natural when Lavi did speak again. "So, didja hear the latest?" the redhead asked him. "According to Johnny, who got it from Reever who overheard Komui making plans, seems like he's come up with a new kinda robot designed to guard Lenalee's virtue, if y'can believe it..."

As Lavi continued to share his gossip, not demanding anything more from Kanda than the occasional shrug or grunt of acknowledgement, Kanda felt himself relaxing further. They were still as different as night and day, and he doubted they would ever get along without sometimes rubbing each other the wrong way, but no one would ever understand him as well as Lavi did. It left them comfortable with each other in a way he'd never experienced before. For the first time since they'd been separated, the nagging feeling that something was missing disappeared.

Like swords tempered in the flames of the Hell they'd had to go through, they really were that much stronger for their experience. And that much stronger for being willing to rely on each other. Kanda let a small smile creep over his lips, and got one back from Lavi in return. Marda had done this much for them - the Earl would never know what had hit him.


End file.
